Intermediality and “Art for All” in the Work of Walter Crane

Intermediality and “Art for All” in the Work of Walter Crane

Emily Cadger

A Thesis Presented to

The University of Guelph

In partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

in Art History and Visual Culture

Guelph, Ontario, Canada © Emily Cadger, December, 2016

Abstract

Intermediality and “Art for All” in the Work of Walter Crane

Emily Cadger Advisor: University of Guelph 2016 Dr. Christina Smylitopoulos Walter Crane (1845-1915) was a British artist credited as one of the most influential illustrators of children’s books for his generation. However, he was also responsible for the circulation of many political prints for the socialist movement during the last decades of the nineteenth century. This thesis approaches these two areas of Crane’s work, not as mutually exclusive entities, but as connected parts of the artists “art for all” mentality. I argue that Crane was an intermedial artist whose pragmatic socialism was distinctive from his peers. Through an analysis of Crane’s Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose (1891), one of the flower books penned and pictured by the artist, I demonstrate how Crane incorporated his own socialist iconography into the floral fable in order to present a socialist utopia in capitalist commodity.

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Acknowledgments

A simple thank you does not justify how appreciative I am to my supervisor Dr. Christina Smylitopoulos for all of her hard work and contributions to this thesis. Due to your never-‐ending patience and enthusiasm I was able to develop not only this thesis, but also my skills as a writer and scholar in ways I could never have imagined. Your passion for the subject, and unwavering support were what made this thesis possible. To Dr. Dominic Marner, and Dr. Jennifer Schacker, thank you for your helpful feedback and encouragement. Your participation as members of my committee made me consider my thesis in ways that I could not have achieved on my own. Likewise I would like to thank Dr. Amanda Boetzkes, whose work first introduced me to the Art History and Visual Culture program at the University of Guelph and led to some of my most challenging but rewarding years as a student. Thank you also to Dr. Sally Hickson who was always willing to discuss this thesis with me and cheer me on.

During the process of writing this thesis I was lucky to have the full support of my incredible family, especially my parents Rick and Ann, who were never once disappointed that I went into the arts. Thank you both for supporting me to the end and always willing to talk me off the ledge when my insecurities ran wild.

I would like to thank my partner Mike, who not only reread my acceptance letter to me to confirm what it said, but whose unwavering support helped me through the sleepless nights, and stress filled days. You stuck with me from the initial application to the final defence and could probably recite this thesis as well as I can now.

Thank you to all of the colleagues and friends I made along the way, whose encouragement and support meant more then they may ever know. Finally thank you to the School of Fine Art and Music and the University of Guelph, who gave me so many opportunities to evolve as a scholar over the past few years. Thank you for helping me find and develop my dream of becoming a scholar.

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Table of Contents

Title Page i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv List of Figures v-x Socialism and Aesthetics: Introduction and Literature Review 1 Chapter One 25 From Paint to Print and Back Again: Emblems as Agents of Intermediality and the Significance of the Book in the Art of Walter Crane

I. Intermediality and Materiality of the Book 28

II. Emblems 35

Chapter Two 51 Lessons from Flora: The Political and Symbolic Importance of the Lily and the Rose to Walter Crane’s Queen Summer

I. Flowers and Ideology 54

II. Flowers for All 62 Chapter Three 78 Constructed Pasts and Fantastical Futures: The importance of fairy-tale narratives to Crane’s representation of a socialist utopia I. The Quest Narrative and Marx 81 II. Visioning Utopia: The Garden and Sleeping Beauty 86

III. Up the Garden Path in Queen Summer 91 Conclusion 97 Figures 100 Bibliography 135

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List of Figures

(Fig. 1) Walter Crane, The Fate of Persephone, 1878. Oil and tempera. Private

Collection.1

(Fig. 2) Walter Crane, Pandora, 1885. Watercolour. Private Collection.

(Fig. 3) Walter Crane, The Riddle of the Sphinx, 1887. Oil on canvas. Untraced.

(Fig. 4) Jeffrey & Co., after Walter Crane, frieze for Corona Vitae, 1889. Wallpaper.

Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.

(Fig. 5) Jeffrey & Co., after Walter Crane, Corona Vitae, 1889. Wallpaper. Whitworth

Art Gallery, University of Manchester.

(Fig. 6) Walter Crane, “Pandora Wonders at the Box,” illustration for Nathaniel

Hawthorne, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, 1892. Coloured lithograph.

(Fig. 7) Walter Crane, frontispiece for Fabian Essays in Socialism, 1889. Coloured

lithograph.

(Fig. 8) Walter Crane, illustration for “The Craftsman’s Dream,” c. 1889. Pen and ink.

Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA.

(Fig. 9) Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 1,

1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

(Fig. 10) Walter Crane, title page from Household Stories from the Collection of the

Brothers Grimm, 1882. Lithograph.

(Fig. 11) Walter Crane, The Skeleton in Armour, 1881-1883. Oil on canvas. Private

collection.

1 The majority of Crane’s paintings have been lost since their initial creation and many of the ones that have them are currently in private collections and difficult to access. This has made it difficult to obtain dimensions for some of the figures listed above, but they have been included when available.

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(Fig. 12) Walter Crane, detail from The Skeleton in Armour, 1881-1883. Oil on canvas.

Private collection.

(Fig. 13) Walter Crane, The Strong Man, printed in the May Day issue of Justice, 1897.

(Fig. 14) Walter Crane, Freedom, 1885. Oil on canvas, 182 × 122 cm. Private Collection

(Fig. 15) Walter Crane, The Capitalist Vampire, first published in Justice, 22 August

1885. Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896. Lithograph.

(Fig. 16) Walter Crane, A Garland for May Day, 1895, printed in the May Day issue of

Justice. Lithograph.

(Fig. 17) Walter Crane, International Solidarity of Labour: Labour’s May Day,

Dedicated to the Workers of the World, first published in Commonweal, 24 May 1890.

Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896, London: Twentieth Century Press,

1896, 11. Lithograph.

(Fig. 18) Walter Crane, The Workers May Pole, first published in Justice, 13 April 1894.

Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896, London: Twentieth Century Press,

1896, 14. Lithograph.

(Fig. 19) Walter Crane, The New Era, frontispiece for The New Party Described by Some

of its Members, 1894. London: Hodder Brothers, 1894, Working Class Movement

Library, Salford.





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(Fig. 29) Sir Emery Walker, Walter Crane as Cimabue, c. 1897. Whole-plate glass

negative. London: National Portrait Gallery.





(Fig. 32) Walter Crane, Flora’s Feast: A Masque of Flowers, pg. 29, 1889. Coloured

Lithograph. London: Cassell.

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(Fig. 33) Edward Burne-Jones, The Legend of the Briar Rose, The Prince Enters the

Briar Wood, 1873-1890. Oil on canvas, 48” x 90”. Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, England:

The Faringdon Collection Trust.

(Fig. 34) John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-1852. Oil on canvas. 30”x40”. London:

Tate Britain Museum.

(Fig. 35) Victorian see and fertilizer trade cards, c. 1885-1890. All between 12.8 and 13.5

x 7.5 and 8 cm

(Fig. 36) Cover of Maule’s Seed Catalog, 1896, 27 x 19.7 cm.

(Fig. 37) Odoardo Fialetti, Petal Venus, plate 4, 1631. Engraved by Francesco Valesio, in

Adriann van de Spiegel, De Formato foetu. Frankfurt: Mattheus Merian.

(Fig. 38) “The Red Rose of Lancaster, the White Rose of York, and the Red and White

United Rose of Tudor,” from Parker’s Annales of England, Oxford, 1855-1857. Photo:

Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner, Johanna. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants,

and Trees. New York: Tudor Publishing. 1960, 77.





(Fig. 41) Walter Crane, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, centerfold illustration, 1876.

Coloured lithograph. London: George Routledge & Sons.

(Fig. 42) Walter Crane, Sleeping Beauty, 1879. Wallpaper. London: Victoria and Albert

Museum.

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(Fig. 43.a) Walter Crane, The Briar Rose, cabinet exterior, 1905. Tempera and gesso on

panel. Glasgow: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

(Fig. 43.b) Walter Crane, The Briar Rose, cabinet interior, 1905. Tempera and gesso on

panel. Glasgow: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

(Fig. 44) Rosa Canina L (Dog Rose) from 1885 Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und

der Schweiz by Otto Wilhelm Thorné, 1885, Gera, Germany.

(Fig. 45) Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Rosa gallica pontiana, from "Les Roses," 1817-24.

Hand-coloured stipple engraving.

(Fig. 46) Grafting diagram, from Arscott, Caroline. William Morris and Edward Burne-

Jones: Interlacings. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

for Studies in British Art, 2008, 118.

(Fig. 47) Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 20-

21, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

(Fig. 48) Walter Crane, detail of rose on hip in clash of lilies and roses from Queen

Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 20, 1891. Coloured lithograph.

London: Cassell.

(Fig. 49) Walter Crane, detail of fleur-de-lis on shield of lily on clash of lilies and roses

from Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 21, 1891. Coloured

lithograph. London: Cassell.

(Fig. 50) Walter Crane, initial clash of rose and lily champions from Queen Summer: or

the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 16-17, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London:

Cassell.

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(Fig. 51) Walter Crane, England’s Emblem, 1895. Photograph from Walter Crane

Archive, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.

(Fig. 52) Walter Crane, cover design, The Pioneer 12 (October 1887).

(Fig. 53) Walter Crane, “Political Independence the Key to Economic Emancipation”

from a Supplement of the Labour Leader Diamond Jubilee Number (19 June 1897).



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Socialism and Aesthetics: Introduction and Literature Review

After receding into the footnotes and archives of art and academia after his death,

scholars rediscovered Walter Crane (1845-1915) at the beginning of the twenty-first

century, with some assistance from a child. In 2000 a young student named Bingham

Bryant was with his class in the library of his elementary school in Old Lyme,

Connecticut (fig. 1).2 He noticed a painting, unframed and propped above a bookcase

behind the librarian’s desk, during a class discussion. The then ten-year-old developed a

fascination with the picture, which prompted him to discuss the piece with his father who

was a dealer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century militaria.3 Christopher Bryant found

that his young son had discovered something rare—Walter Crane’s long lost oil painting

The Fate of Persephone (1878). A Berlin art dealer sold The Fate of Persephone to Yale

professor Brian Hooker in 1923, who loaned the work valued at $200 to the Old Lyme

Center School in 1935, where it remained unclaimed by his family until Bingham’s

rediscovery.4

When asked about why this particular painting, overlooked for decades, had

captured his attention Bingham stated: “There was something about it [and] I suspected it

might be very valuable.” 5 He was proven correct in a two significant ways. Not only did

2 Kathy Ishizuka, "Lost Masterpiece Discovered in School Library," School Library Journal 48, no. 4 (April 2002), 25. 3 Angus Wilkie, "Crane Spotting," British Week (June 6-12, 2002), 1. 4 Ishizuka, Lost Masterpiece Discovered in School Library, 25. Morna O’Neill Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 166-167. Most of Crane’s paintings were bought by German art collectors throughout his lifetime where he gained a much stronger following than in Britain. Ernst Seeger’s untraced collection of Crane’s work contained six of Crane’s most important canvases as of 1898. 5 Ishizuka, Lost Masterpiece Discovered in School Library, 25.

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the re-discovery of The Fate of Persephone reinvigorate an interest in Crane in art

historical discourse after a prolonged absence, but it also demonstrated the artist’s ability

to connect and communicate with children through images. It is precisely through

Crane’s work for children that we might come to understand more about this Victorian

artist and his consequence.

The career of English artist Walter Crane, best known for his involvement in the

Arts and Crafts and British Socialist movements of the late nineteenth century, spanned

over fifty years and included work in several mediums. A polymath, Crane was an active

painter, but he also designed wallpaper, textiles and embroideries, stained glass,

plasterwork, tiles, and designed political prints and maps. Yet his accomplishments in

these areas have been overshadowed by his success in and influence on the genre of

children’s book illustration. Providing works in stark contrast to the books of his youth,

Crane’s graceful figures set in stylized settings, revolutionized children’s book

illustration and he soon became known as the premier artist of the nursery.6 Characterized

by fixed imagery rendered in bold lines, Crane’s wood block, and later lithographic,

designs, influenced by Japanese prints, were conducive to new developments in colour

printing and he found success in a growing market geared toward family reading.

Furthermore, the emphasis in Crane’s work on beauty for its own sake, a reflection of the

influence the Pre-Raphaelites and then of the aesthetic movement, was, according to

Crane, meant to appeal to “a heart which, in some cases, happily, never grows up or

grows old.”7

6 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2-7, and "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," Current Literature, vol. 43, no. 6 (Dec. 1907), pp. 637-641. 7 Rebecca Knuth, Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation, (Scarecrow Press, 2012), 90.

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Walter Crane was known as both “the artist of the nursery” and the “artist of

socialism.”8 Despite this, Crane’s illustrations for children’s books have rarely been

considered in relation to his socialist activism.9 One of the most prolific book illustrators

of late Victorian England as well as one of the most prominent socialist artists during the

last two decades of the nineteenth century, Crane believed that the beautiful could be

political and the political could be beautiful.10 Crane was dedicated to dissolving the

boundaries between fine and decorative art in the service of political activism. The tool

he used was intermediality.11

From an early age Crane witnessed his father’s success in working across

mediums. Thomas Crane (1808-1859) worked predominately in portraits and miniatures,

but he was a versatile artist who experimented with architectural design, lithography,

landscapes, and silhouettes, among other genres. Crane believed that all types of art were

connected and he advocated for this in his many lectures, texts, and visual works.12 A key

example of this intermedial approach can be seen in Crane’s Fine Art Society Exhibition

of 1891 in which he displayed together for the first time Pandora, his watercolour from

8 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2-7. 9 Horst Dölvers, Fables Less and Less Fabulous : English Fables and Parables of the Nineteenth Century and Their Illustrations, (Newark, [Del.] : London ; Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1997) 114-142. James Fraser, “Walter Crane and His Socialist Children's Book Illustrations,” Phaedrus: An International Annual of Children’s Literature Research (1981), 6-10. Helen Vera, "Crane, Children and the Cause," The Illustrated Word at the Fin De Siècle, (2006). 10 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 4. 11 Ruth Livesey, “Morris, Carpenter, Wilde, and the Political Aesthetics of Labor,” Victorian Literature and Culture (32, no. 3, 2004), 602, and O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 1-19. Irina O. Rajewsky, "Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality," Intermédialités: Histoire Et Théorie Des Arts, Des Lettres Et Des Techniques 6 (2005), 43-64. 12 Isobel Spencer, Walter Crane (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 9, Morna O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, exhibition catalogue, (Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery, 2008), 33, and O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 19-52. This concept is discussed at various points in much of Crane’s own writings including his The Bases of Design, (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1898), Of the Decorative Illustration of Books, Old and New, (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1896), and The Claims of Decorative Art, (London: Lawrence and Bullpen, 1892).

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1885, The Riddle of the Sphinx, an oil painting from 1887, and Corona Vitae, a wallpaper

from 1889 (figs. 2-5). These images all feature one of Crane’s most important symbols–

the sphinx.

For Crane, the mythological hybrid creature of the sphinx became symbolic of

both art and socialism, which he created when he combined the Greek and Egyptian

origins of the creature with the writings of the Scottish philosopher and author Thomas

Carlyle (1795-1881), who was highly influential to early British socialists.13 For Carlyle,

the sphinx was an agent of transformation that stimulated the questions that would

inevitably lead to political change.14 The catalogue texts created a network for the

exhibition audience to connect and interpret these works.15 In it, Crane described the

relationship between the ancient sphinx and modern dilemma. In Crane’s iconography,

the sphinx became the questioner of society—a creature from the past that with her

riddles terrorized Thebes—that could now interrogate modern society about its current

and future exploits.16 Crane placed the sphinx at transition points in the narratives: when

Pandora opens the box, when Oedipus answers the riddle, and when symmetrically

opposed sphinxes pluck the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.17 By connecting the

13 Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, [1843] (ed. Richard D. Altick. New York: New York UP, 1977). 14 Socialists looked to Carlyle’s Past and Present, which was originally published in 1843. Socialist writers such as Ernst Belfort Bax, Sidney Webb, and George Bernard Shaw, among others, used the metaphor of the sphinx riddle being present in modern society. The Carlylean sphinx became an important emblem for the Fabian Society and it appeared on the frontispiece for their 1889 Fabian Essays in Socialism (fig. 7). Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Carlyle and the Search for Authority (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991) offers an extensive study of Carlyle’s theory of political order. 15 Walter Crane, Catalogue of a Collection of Designs by Walter Crane, A. R. W. S. London: Fine Art Society, 1891. The catalogue text is currently held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University and was unavailable for review. However, O’Neill discusses them in both Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 113-138 and “Pandora's Box: Walter Crane, ‘Our Sphinx-Riddle,’ and the Politics of Decoration,” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 35, no. 1 (2007), pp. 309-326. 16 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 125. 17 Crane, Catalogue of a Collection of Designs, 18, as referenced in O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 125.

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sphinx with these narratives, Crane depicts the creature as a figure who poses questions

about the efficacy of socialism currently being debated in art and politics. These ideas

would also be referenced in Pandora Wonders at the Box, an illustration from The

Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1892), the frontispiece for Fabian Essays in Socialism

(1889), and The Craftsman’s Dream (1889) a drawing for a book he did not complete.18

These were not included in the exhibition, but nevertheless contemplated similar ideas

(figs. 6-8).

Tracking the motif of the sphinx across mediums illustrates how Crane connects

work relegated to the decorative margins of artistic production to the very centre of fine

art. However, the sphinx is not the only character that reappears throughout Crane’s work,

as heroic knights in Phrygian bonnets, the female personification of socialism in her

Grecian dress, and the Atlas-like labourer supporting the weight of capitalism on his

shoulders all appear in various mediums and narratives. An examination of his oeuvre

reveals an emblematic language that communicates a consistent message. Crane is known

for his direct support of the socialist movement and created posters, cartoons and designs

that advertised rallies and critically engaged with politics. Crane’s particular brand of

socialism held that art ought to be accessible to all classes. Therefore, his political ideas

can be detected in all of his work.19 As Morna O’Neill aptly put, Crane transformed “art

for art’s sake” into “art for all.”20

18 Nathaniel Hawthorne, with illustrations by Walter Crane, The Wonder Book For Girls and Boys, (London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co. 1892), 81, Walter Crane, frontispiece for Fabian Essays in Socialism (London: George Allen & Unwind, 1889), and Walter Crane, “The Craftsman Dream,” Labour Leader (1 May 1897) 206. 19 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 4. 20 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 15.

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Though scholarship reflects some acknowledgement of Crane’s socialist

intentions with his children’s book illustration, the extent to which his socialist

iconography permeated this material has not been fully investigated, particularly in

regards to the works he both penned and pictured.21 This is, in part, due to the way in

which his oeuvre has been categorized, not only by medium, but also by intended

audience. As they were marketed to children and their parents, Crane’s book-works have

rarely been invited to dialogue with his other, more overtly political work.22 This has led

to the general assumption that they are devoid of critical content.

In this thesis, I will demonstrate the intermediality of Crane’s work. The way in

which the images communicate and refer to one another across mediums, is a unique

aspect of Crane’s oeuvre. Crane even developed his own iconography, a symbolic

pictorial language that he deployed in the service of his “art for all” philosophy. This

thesis therefore supports new research that suggests that Crane was not merely an

aesthetic or political follower of the Arts and Crafts giant, William Morris (1834-1896),

but that he had his very own style of socialism that can be traced throughout his oeuvre.

To do so, I will analyze Crane’s rarely studied 1891 illustrated work Queen

Summer: Or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, which I propose is not mildly socialist,

but instead a bold and holistic example of propaganda meant for the dissemination of

21 Vera, "Crane, Children, and the Cause," The Illustrated Word at the Fin De Siècle, (2006), Dölvers, Fables Less and Less Fabulous : English Fables and Parables of the Nineteenth Century and Their Illustrations, 114-142. Fraser, “Walter Crane and His Socialist Children's Book Illustrations,” 6-10. 22 In the early years of the twentieth century, Crane would have the opportunity to contribute to children’s books that were more overtly political such as A.A. Watts with Illustrations by Walter Crane, The Child’s Socialist Reader, (London: Twentieth Century Press, 1907) and F. J. Gould, Pages for Young Socialists, with Prefaces by H. M. Hyndman and J. Kerr Hardie, and Illustrations by Walter Crane, (National Labour Press, 1913. Morna O’Neill has made the most strides in connecting Crane’s painting to his socialism, and I will discuss her sizeable contributions to the study of Crane later in this chapter.

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socialist ideologies in a domestic sphere.23 Crane incorporated symbols from his

mythological and allegorical paintings and socialist prints, imbuing his fairy tales with

political messages. To track this, I will situate Queen Summer within the artist’s work,

thereby enabling comparison with materials that have recognized associations with

Crane’s politics, including other books, Academy- and otherwise-exhibited paintings, and

socialist pamphlets.24 This approach will show how Crane’s choice of visual symbols and

motifs employed in his political paintings and prints pervades his book-works. Queen

Summer is not an exception to Crane’s artistic output, or even a milder version, but one of

many manifestations of his interest in the alliance of art and socialism.

Consisting of forty coloured illustrations. Queen Summer is one of Crane’s

‘flower books,’ a series of five works penned and illustrated by the artist between 1889

and 1906, which tell tales from the garden (fig. 9).25 The other titles in the series are

Flora’s Feast: A Masque of Flowers, (1889), A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden

(1898), A Flower Wedding: Described by Two Wallflowers (1905), and Flower’s From

Shakespeare’s Garden: A Posy From the Plays (1906).26 In each book, Crane transforms

23 A copy of Crane’s Queen Summer: The Tournament of the Rose, (London: Cassell, 1891) can be found on the Internet Archives here: https://archive.org/details/queensummerortou00cranrich. Queen Summer has been used predominately as an example of Crane’s later illustrative work. Spencer discusses Queen Summer and the rest of the flower books as taking the place of Crane’s early illustrations for children (Spencer, Walter Crane, 138), while authors such as Engen and Konody reference it as an example of Crane’s book design (Paul G. Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, London: G. Bell & Sons, 1902, 34-36 and 62-65). As one of the more successful flower books, pages from Queen Summer are often used as examples when discussing the category of flower books as a section of Crane’s oeuvre, but only in regards to its connection to the other books instead of an individual work. The most extensive examination that the flower books received was from O’Neill where she discusses the socialist connections between A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden (1898), and Flower’s From Shakespeare’s Garden: A Posy From the Plays (1906), and the Countess of Warwick who’s gardens inspired the illustrations for the books Morna O'Neill, "Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics," Garden History 36, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 289-300. 24 The Skeleton in Armour (1882-1883), Freedom (1885) A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden (1898), The Triumph of Labour (1891) and The Briar Rose (1907) to name a few. 25 O'Neill, "Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics," 291. 26 All of the flower books went through multiple reprints so the dates associated with their publishing vary depending on what edition each author references in their discussion on Crane. The publishing dates

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flowers into whimsical human-plant hybrids that captivate the reader’s imagination as

they lead you through the story. Characterized by a decorative combination of classical,

medieval, and gothic motifs, Queen Summer is set in a utopian garden in which

anthropomorphized rose and lily ‘knights’ battle in a jousting tournament for the chance

to become the lover of the Queen of Summer. The story, which begins with a clash of

lances, is concerned with the aftermath of the match when it ends in a draw. Both knights

fall together, still locked in combat, and a mêlée ensues between the ranks of the rose and

lily knights who are determined to continue the fight that was not settled by the joust. The

figure of Queen Summer, seeing her subjects in conflict, descends from her throne to

explain why both factions are important to the success of the garden kingdom. After the

Queen’s intermission, the lilies and roses come together and assist each other in

recovering from the confrontation. The tale ends with harmony and celebration among

the flower citizens.

Crane had a high regard for the intellect of British people. He believed that if you

presented an idea in the right way, an audience would be able to understand what has

been offered and come to an informed decision about the topic at hand.27 One of the right

ways, in his opinion, was through “fantasy” or artistic renderings of fairy tales, which in

this period became important.28 According to Molly Clark-Hilliard, the Victorian

attached to the flower books in my study are all taken from Gertrude Massé, A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter Crane, London: Chelsea, 1923. Massé’s work, the most contemporary compilation of Crane’s titles after his death, attempts to create a complete bibliography of Crane’s book-work illustrations. This was done in part to celebrate the artist’s achievements in illustration as his death went mostly unnoticed in 1915 with the start of the First World War. 27 This is discussed at various points in Crane’s writings including Walter Crane, The Bases of Design. London, G. Bell, 1898, Walter Crane, An Artists Reminiscences, New York: Macmillan, 1907 and "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," Current Literature, vol. 43, no. 6 (Dec. 1907), pp. 637-641. 28 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 110.

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audience “understood fairy tales to represent England’s political landscape.”29 The

fantastical subject matter, which was connected to a historical past, could provide escape

from an industrialized world, yet were also discursive tools that could be used to

critically engage with, and interrogate contemporary concerns. This duality of past and

present would have attracted Crane and other socialist artists to the fairy tale.30 The

narratives were firmly connected to childhood and offered insight into the cultural

childhood of a society—an attractive idea to artists who were interested in exploring the

pivot point of social change and the beginnings of a new social structure.31

Socialism, an economic, social, and political ideology that deals with social

ownership and democratic control of labour was a multivalent movement in Britain

during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.32 Formed of mercurial parties with

constantly shifting members, the movement focused predominately on improving access

to education and working conditions and lobbied for structured leisure time for all.33

Crane joined a number of socialist groups and set about revolutionizing the visual

representation of Victorian socialism by creating pamphlets, broadsides, programs, and

banners for many of the groups, even those to which he was not a member.34 However,

his involvement in both the consumer market and socialism–which challenged capitalism

and the creation of art for capitalist consumption–have caused past critics to separate

29 Molly Clark-Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2014), 5. 30 The benchmark example is William Morris, but Bernard Shaw and Robert Blatchford also referenced fairy tales in their writings for socialist periodicals. For a more in depth discussion of the fairy tale in socialist press see Caroline Sumpter The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale, Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-century Writing and Culture, (Basingstoke [England]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 31 Sumpter, The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale, 38-39. 32 Chris Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 1-17. 33 Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914, 1-17. 34 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 1-19.

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Crane’s political works from those that were commercially motivated or intended for elite

artistic institutions.35 It was readily acknowledged during the Victorian era that socialist

ideology permeated all of Crane’s artistic production following his public declaration of

allegiance to the movement in 1884, along with that from the preceding decade.36 Yet,

subsequent scholarship on Crane has either downplayed or, in some cases, overlooked the

political underpinnings of his work. This has led to an underestimation of Crane’s

political significance. Concerned with integrating art into the everyday life of British

people, Crane believed that appreciating beauty was the key to transitioning to a socialist

society.

According to Crane, art’s true purpose was to deal with the most important moral

issues of the day, expressed through public works on a grand scale.37 However, Crane

worked in a society in which commissions for art of this scale were few and far

between.38 The practical challenges of supporting himself and his family meant that he

had to find another way to channel his ideas. While some critics, such as Alan Crawford

and Greg Smith, have come to believe that Crane failed to achieve his ambitions, I 35 This separation is seen or referenced in the works of Alan Crawford, “Crane, Walter (1845–1915),” Alan Crawford In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, (Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2013), 2. Greg Smith, and Sarah Hyde, eds. Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, Exhibition catalogue (London: Lund Humphries in association with Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, 1989). Separating Crane’s commercial work into chapters in Smith and Hyde’s book discusses an area, such as his Toy Books, his wallpapers, and his interior designs, separate from the other sections of Crane’s oeuvre. Spencer divides Crane’s work in her book Walter Crane in order to best discuss the entirety of his personal, political, and career exploits: Spencer, Walter Crane, Table of Contents. Vera, "Crane, Children and the Cause," The Illustrated Word at the Fin De Siècle, (2006). Vera circles around the overlapping of commercialism and socialism in some of Crane’s work throughout her site but does not explore it thoroughly. 36 Crane, Walter. "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," Current Literature, vol. 43, no. 6 (Dec. 1907), pp. 637-641. Fraser, “Walter Crane and His Socialist Children's Book Illustrations,” 6-7, discusses this when referencing some of Crane’s later socialist book-works. Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 1-12. O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 9-10, and 19. 37 Crane, The Bases of Design, 50-70. 38 Anthony Crane, “My Grandfather Walter Crane,” The Yale University Library Gazette 31/3 (January 1957), 105-107. Sarah Victoria Turner, “Walter Crane and Hermann Obrist: craft, sculpture and transnationality at the fin de siècle”, Henry Moore Institute Online Papers and Proceedings (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2010), 4-6.

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believe Crane found a way to realize his political ambition without jeopardizing his need

for income and his desire for recognition as an artist.39 As such, Crane can be

characterized as a pragmatic socialist—he created a socialist platform out of a commodity,

providing an innovative solution to the realities of British art, commercial and political

life.

In Chapter One I will explore the tension between the artistic goals and the

economic realities in Crane’s career in order to demonstrate how the artist began treating

the illustrated book like an extended history painting. In doing so he combined his

aspirations to become a public artist with being an artist associated with industrial

methods. This chapter will also discuss the materiality of Crane’s work and how the

illustrated books provided an opportunity to deliver his critique on society to an audience

beyond the public spaces of the walls of the gallery or the crowds of the political rally.

This chapter will also explore the place of the book as a work of art with respect to

Crane’s thoughts on the function of total design and why he thought beauty would

stimulate the evolution of British society. Illustrated books were transportable objects,

but the book provided a liminal space in which people could safely interact with the

radical concepts contained within its pages. This would have been important to Crane as

he was not a revolutionist, but strongly believed that socialism would come about

naturally once citizens were informed of the benefits of the movement.

In Chapter Two I will examine the significance of the flowers that Crane chose as

his characters and the symbolism attached to them. I propose in this chapter that Crane

was not depicting the lily that was common in the gardens of England at this time, but

39 Crawford, “Crane, Walter (1845–1915),” 2-3, Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 13-23, Crane, “My Grandfather Walter Crane,” 102-103, & 106.

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rather he was referencing the emblem of the fleur-de-lei, in particular the Florentine lily,

while the rose represents the beauty of art that was central to Crane’s ideas on socialism.

Crane’s floral-hybrids therefore represent two different societies; the rose people of the

medieval England of Crane’s imagination, and the lily people of the idyllic past of the

Italian Renaissance—two ideal societies that Crane believed exemplified the qualities

that socialism would provide for modern society. These flowers could also reconcile the

tension between high art and craft.

The quest narrative, which I explore in Chapter Three, was particularly important.

The quest is a key element in a fairy tale in which the hero sets out on a difficult journey

in search of something symbolic, of an ideal that, when found, will change his life

forever.40 Along the way the hero encounters difficulties that make it seem as if his goal

is impossible, but unlikely help comes to his aid and he is able to reach the end of his

quest and return home happy, wealthy, and a changed person. The idea of a ‘happily-

ever-after’ ending became a part of English fairy tales that were often sanitized versions

of stories from France and Germany.41 It became expected in these stories that the hero

would triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. This storyline then became

useful visual and literary devices for anyone who wanted a change to occur, so social and

political groups appropriated quests for their propaganda. Crane found this particularly

useful as he already had an audience that loved his books, but he also saw political

potential in the genre. Crane transformed the traditional image of a heroic prince into a 40 Sumpter, The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale, 129. 41 The idea of a happily ever after and its impact on English fairy tales is discussed in Molly Clark-Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, Sumpter, The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale, and Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, Fairy Tales, Natural History, and Victorian Culture, Hampshire, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Molly Clark-Hillard, “The Fairy Tale in Victorian England,” in Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives, ed. Christine A. Jones and Jennifer Schacker (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2013), 545. The first note discusses when and how tales traveled to England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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manual labourer, a common figure in the daily lives of the British people.42 With the

inclusion of a Phrygian bonnet, Crane makes the connection between traditional fairy

tales and the socialist movement.

Walter Crane had strong opinions on the role of art in society. It was Crane’s

conviction that true art was dead. He believed stalwartly that art would be resurrected

within a socialist society once the artist had been freed from the restraints of capitalism, a

theme he explored throughout his artistic career.43 While Crane’s socialism may not

seem to have been as robust as the likes of Morris, Crane viewed socialism as “a

universal solvent,” one of the many painterly metaphors he uses to reconcile his concerns

about art’s place in society.44 Critics have even been untrusting of Crane’s conversion to

socialism, though the artist was quite clear about the importance of the movement to his

life. In an article for an 1894 publication of Justice he states,

I imagine that as people can be roughly divided into Socialists and

Individualists so they can be sub-divided into conscious Socialists and

unconscious Socialists. I believe I really belonged to the latter class long

before I knew I belonged to the former.45

This quote has been taken by Eve Stano to mean that some of the socialist iconography in

Crane’s work from the early part of the 1880’s was put there by the artist

42 For a more extensive study of the labourer as a heroic figure see Men at Work. T. J. Barringer, Men at Work : Art and Labour in Victorian Britain, (New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2005). 43 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2-7. Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 1-12. 44 Crane, An Artists Reminiscences, 255. 45 Walter Crane, ‘How I Became a Socialist’, Justice (30 June 1894), p.6.

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unconsciously.46 But Crane was grappling with his political identity when he was

apprenticed to Linton in the 1860’s demonstrating decades of religious and political

questioning.47 To my mind, suggesting that this questioning appeared in his art

subliminally is going too far. Evidently Crane was quite aware of his reputation and how

his art was being represented in the public sphere, which challenges the notion that

socialist motifs slipped into his work unnoticed.48 Crane, who was known for berating

publishers if the advertisements for his work did not meet his exacting standards, or for

pulling his paintings from shows if their position in the exhibition undermined the

political thrust, was after all, a commercial and a socialist artist. I would argue that he

was in fact hyperaware of how his art was handled in the commercial sector.49

Crawford states in his biography of the artist that while Crane chased his ambition

of being a celebrated painter he filled his time “creating tolerable substitutes.”50 Crane’s

socialist iconography, acknowledged in his socialist propaganda and public paintings,

appear throughout his books and wallpaper designs. This intermediality traversed the

boundaries between the public and the private spheres. The domestic space and its design

capabilities became important at the end of the nineteenth century.51 Writers such as the

Reverend W.J. Loftie (1839-1911) and Mary Eliza Haweis (1848-1898) promoted the

benefits of an artistic interior that could increase enjoyment of the space and improve

46 Eve Stano, "Conscious and Unconscious Socialism in the Watercolours of Walter Crane and Thomas Matthews Rooke," The Golden Age of British Watercolours, 1790-1910, (January 1, 2012. Accessed March 10, 2015), 2-12. 47 Crane, “My Grandfather Walter Crane,” 99-100. Walter Crane, “Why Socialism Appeals to Artists,” Atlantic Monthly 49/411 (January 1892), 110-115. Crane, ‘How I Became a Socialist’, p.6. 48 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 24. 49 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 24, and Spencer, Walter Crane, 129. 50 Crawford, “Crane, Walter (1845–1915),” 2. Crawford does not state exactly what these substitutes were, he could be referring to any or all of Crane’s commercial works, but Crawford’s earlier comment on the success of Crane’s children’s books rubbing salt in the wound of his unsuccessful painting career, leads me to believe that Crane’s book works were not held in the highest regard by Crawford. 51 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 47-58.

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morality.52 This emphasis on the benefits of art in the home was fundamental to socialist

artists. It was the driving force behind Morris’s Kelmscott Press and the Hammersmith

Society, also supported by Crane.53 According to Linda Parry, they shared the desire “to

restore the dignity of art to ordinary household decoration.”54 As art moved into the home

it also began to move into the nursery, and the space for children became another area for

designers to focus on. Crane took full advantage of this, designing wallpapers that

depicted stories from his Toy Books and designing his books to be objects of decoration

that could add to the artistic value of an interior for the child as well as the adults who

cared for them. Crane tailored his designs as much for the parents as for the children.55

Introducing the discourse of socialism through a decorative commercial object allowed

Crane to cross the threshold of the nursery to the drawing room and connect the

conversations of domestic life with public debate, interweaving the political with the

decorative.

It would be fitting to consider Crane as a figure equivalent to a sphinx figure of

late-Victorian society: a person who questions the socio-political and cultural happenings

of Britain through his position as an artist and as a socialist. His art then becomes the

visual representation of the riddles that were asked by the mythological creature that

needed to be answered in order to save Britain from its current state of disorder. Scholars

such as O’Neill, Dölvers, Brockington, and Smith have addressed the questions that

52 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 47. 53 Grace Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 28, no. 4 (2012), 359-73. For a much more comprehensive study on Morris and his ideas on art in the home as well as his ideas on art and socialism see Imogen Hart, Arts and Crafts Objects, (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press; 2010). 54 Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 129. 55 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 34.

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Crane’s art leads us to ask, both in terms of politics and aesthetics.56 Yet, the scholarship

surrounding Crane still has deficits that need to be addressed in regards to the intermedial

nature of his work. The aforementioned hesitation in studying Crane’s work all together

is in some ways understandable: he was prolific and each work can be interpreted in

many ways. Nevertheless, without looking at Crane’s oeuvre holistically you miss the

essence of Crane as an artist: as someone who believed that all art was connected and the

driving force behind society.

The academic consideration of Crane can be divided into three segments: his

political paintings, his life, and his influence on book illustration. The majority of

scholarship surrounding Crane is done in a structured format – each medium given its

own section and discussed from Crane’s first production to his last within the mediums

parameters – until Morna O’Neill rediscovered Crane.57

Over the last decade, O’Neill has emerged as the leading scholar on Walter Crane

and the political significance of his painting. Her numerous texts draw connections

between Crane’s artistic creations and his political activism, which she pursues through

the examination of his iconography. Her scholarship revitalized his position in art history

and as a leading artist in nineteenth-century British Aestheticism.58 O’Neill corrects the

56 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 1, and 32-33, O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 17-33, Grace Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 359-73, Dölvers, Fables Less and Less Fabulous : English Fables and Parables of the Nineteenth Century and Their Illustrations, 114-142, Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 13-69. 57 This began with Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, in 1905. The structure of this book became the standard format well into the 1980’s when Crane scholarship came to a standstill. This standard changed in the early 2000’s with the renewed interest in Crane as a painter, and the acknowledgment of his intermedial practice put forth by Morna O’Neill. 58 The main source for this is O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, but she deals with the importance of decoration to Crane’s legacy as an artist in Morna O’Neill, “On Walter Crane and the Aims of Decorative Art,” BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," in Rethinking the Interior, C. 1667-1896,

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omission of Crane’s paintings from art history by demonstrating the contributions they

supply to understanding the concepts of allegory as political and to theories of decoration.

O’Neill is also one of the earliest scholars to deal critically with Crane’s socialist

propaganda as an important form of nineteenth-century visual culture.59 O’Neill argues

that Crane’s socialism was different from other socialists of his time, and to understand

this difference we need to look at his art through a politically-attuned lens.60

Throughout her works O’Neill emphasizes Crane’s personal belief that the artist

and the labourer are one in the same–both contribute to society through their physical

labour.61 Crane discussed this idea on the connection between labour and art production

extensively in his writings on socialism, often drawing comparisons between

dockworkers or farmers and artists of London. As Crane states in his book Claims of

Decorative Art (1892):

It is difficult to draw the line and to say where labour ends and art

begins…both are contributing to the best of their ability to the wants of

man…The labourer is engaged in moving, say, earth or minerals from one

place to another with his shovel. The painter is engaged in moving earth

149-167, (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010,) Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 2008, and "A Political Theory of Decoration, 1901-1910." In The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, 1901-1910, 287-311, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Center for British Arts, 2010). 59 Socialism and Crane is dealt with in all of O’Neill’s work but her Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 2008, and "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago." Art History 38, (no. 1 2015), 106-37 discusses the combination of aesthetics and politics in detail. Grace Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 359-73, Dölvers, Fables Less and Less Fabulous : English Fables and Parables of the Nineteenth Century and Their Illustrations, 114-142, Fraser, “Walter Crane and His Socialist Children's Book Illustrations,” 6-10, and Stano, "Conscious and Unconscious Socialism in the Watercolours of Walter Crane and Thomas Matthews Rooke," 1-18, all discuss the importance of socialism in Crane’s works from its inclusion in his book illustrations and political prints, to its integration into his paintings. However, prior to the twenty-first century and O’Neill’s intervention, Crane’s socialism was discussed separately from his art outside of the explicit socialist propaganda he created. 60 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 1-17. 61 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 81-112.

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and minerals (in the form of colours) from one place to another – from his

palette to his canvas with his brush.62

O’Neill argues throughout many of her publications that Crane’s paintings have not

received the attention they deserve because their content has been separated from both

socialist rhetoric and Crane’s own theories about this political movement. This is

partially due to the idea, exemplified by Konody, that Crane’s “greatness lies not so much

in his artistic achievements as in his influence.”63 O’Neill addresses this in her

scholarship by focusing on the correlation between Crane’s paintings and socialism in

order to demonstrate how understanding Crane’s imagery and its political content relies

on reuniting Crane’s own theories on design and social reform with his art. This approach

will best reveal how Crane’s career, political, and personal lives are all much more

interwoven than they are thought to be.

Before O’Neill, the scholarship on Crane was predominantly focused on his

influence on book illustration. Crane’s biographers attempted to provide comprehensive

and unbiased accounts of the artist’s life and avoid overly complimentary responses to his

work, in favour of a critical approach.64 The structure of these works divide Crane’s life

into time periods showing the evolution of the artist, from his first moments of inspiration

62 Crane, Claims of Decorative Art, 50.-51 63 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, v. 64 There are three notable scholars who deal with the events of Crane’s life; P.G. Konody, Isobel Spencer, and Walter Crane himself. While Crane’s An Artists Reminiscences (1907)_deals extensively with his socialist activities and the international acclaim he achieved during his lifetime, it tends to overlook his illustrative work, emphasizing his paintings and professional connections. Contrary to this Konody’s The Art of Walter Crane (1902) devotes a large amount of discussion to Crane’s endeavours in the publishing world (Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 29-86), with a smaller discussion on his painting, politics, and recognition outside of the nursery (Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 1-11, 87-107, 107-111 and 115-128). The most comprehensive biography on the artist in regards to discussing all aspects of his work equally, and the starting point for all Crane scholars is Spencer’s Walter Crane (1975).

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to his death.65 Though these accounts provide a large amount of detail the sections

created by the authors ultimately interrupts the viewer’s ability to view Crane’s oeuvre

holistically and disrupts the unified style and message contained in the entirety of Crane’s

work.

The most notable bibliographic accounts in this field are Gertrude Massé and

Rodney K. Engen, who provide a detailed timeline of Crane’s publications that includes

information on the publishers, the number of illustrations Crane produced, whether Crane

was responsible for illustrations or illustration and text, as well as whether or not the

work was commissioned by a particular patron. 66 Attempting to compile a

comprehensive list of Crane’s publications, these works often have an introductory

chapter that discuss the importance of book illustration, or an aspect of it, to Crane’s

career. While Engen emphasizes the idea of pictures as learning tools, and Crane’s

intentions to create quality books with this idea of education in mind in his introduction,

the critical component of Massé’s book focuses on a comparison between two giants of

the Victorian nursery: Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane.67 In the “Preface” to A

65 The common divisions are: early life, apprenticeship, early works, socialism, and later works. Sections specifically about book illustration, painting, and decorative art sometimes further supplement these categories. 66 Gertrude Massé and Rodney K. Engen are the most notable authors in this area of scholarship on Crane. Massé, A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter Crane, (1923), and Rodney K. Engen, Walter Crane as a Book Illustrator, (London: Academy Editions; 1975). Massé’s book was the first critical attention that Crane received after his death and it was created to bring recognition to the artist as an individual but also his influence on colour-printing, as well as, children’s book illustrations. Engen’s book remains at the forefront of bibliographic-biographies written on Crane and it re-introduced Crane the book illustrator to a greater public outside of academia. The work done by Massé and Engen has proven invaluable to the study of Crane as a book illustrator as they were able to trace the majority of his publications. However, the work from the very beginning of Crane’s career are difficult to track due to the artist not signing his name to them. Also some of his illustrated work after 1900 has not been included in Massé’s text, particularly that of The Child’s Socialist Reader, and Pages for Young Socialists. Massé, A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter Crane, 11. 67 Engen, Walter Crane as a Book Illustrator, 1-17, and Massé, A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter Crane, 7-9. Anne Lundin also discusses this idea of Crane being interested in education through images and adds to Engen’s argument by discussing how the mass-market was appealing

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Bibliography of First Editions, written by Heywood Sumner, the difference in line used

for rendering characters is discussed in reference to the commercial success of the two

artists.68 This comparison was one that Crane faced often during his lifetime, however,

what is significant about this text is that it is the first instance when technique over

imagery is emphasized for “the king and the grandfather of the nursery.”69

Crane would again fall into the recesses of scholarly attention as his works were

dispersed throughout collections and lost, emerging briefly as a fleeting mention in

overviews of art history and children’s literature of the late-nineteenth century until the

1970’s when a flurry of scholarship in the field of Library and Information Sciences

brought his book-works back to the forefront of academic interest.70 However, it was not

for an appreciation of Crane’s skills as an artist, but rather his interest in nature, that

appealed to a new aesthetic interest. Since Crane attempted to introduce the beautiful into

the Victorians’ everyday life through his book-works and wallpapers using stylized

designs of nature, these mediums were counted as examples by most of the references

to Crane as a source for disseminating his works, because it would provide educational images to a wider variety of children. 68 Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, 102. Crane being very deliberate and consistent in his use of line with an emphasis on contour, while Caldecott used incomplete, broken lines similar to sketching to create an impression or expression in his works. The two men had been compared in this respect during their lifetime, with Caldecott’s treatment being generally preferred as it provoked a sense of emotion, whereas Crane’s control of his lines was remarked on as cold, leading critics to label Caldecott the king of the nursery and Crane the father. 69 Massé, A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter Crane, 7-9. Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, 231 and 234. 70 The 1970’s was a decade of renewed interest in the library and its function as technology became more prominent, and archives were fully explored to continue expanding the MAchine-Readable Cataloging of the previous decade. This emphasis on the library sciences was combined with a renewed interest of Art Nouveau, which had begun in the 1960’s and continued into the 1970’s, a movement that Crane had been connected to most notably through his later illustrated books. This combination brought about a renewed interest in Crane and his works. Annette Lamb, "Contemporary Libraries: 1970s." History of Libraries. 2012, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, "Art Nouveau Revival 1900. 1933. 1966. 1974." The Art Tribune. November 22, 2009, and Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 2.

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connecting Crane to the Art Nouveau movement.71 Labelled a “proto Art Nouveau” artist,

by critics, particularly in Germany, the impact of Crane as an ‘international’ artist is

explored by Lea-Ruth C. Wilkens.72 Specifically, she examines how Crane’s popularity

in Germany was principle to the reform of the German picture book between 1865 and

1914, and outlines the separate histories of English and German illustrated books directed

at children.73 Outlining similarities in theme, use of colour, and a change in appreciation

for overall book design by German illustrators after their introduction to Crane’s works

Wilkens’ thesis also provides one of the first discussions of Crane as an influence on an

individual artist—Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956).74 In the discussion on the connection

between Crane and Kreidolf, Flora’s Feast is referenced as the work that inspired the

floral kingdoms of Kreidolf’s illustrations; and is, furthermore, one of the earliest

instances of a flower book being discussed academically outside of Crane’s lifetime.75

Examining Crane’s work in America, Frederic Daniel Weinstein identifies

Crane’s influence on art rather than his actual artistic creations, as the artist’s true

legacy.76 Weinstein coined the “Crane Manner,” a term that describes Crane’s

draughtmanship that allowed him to design images that appeared whimsical and naïve at

first glance, but allowed the viewer to see the “deeper and more affecting values” upon

71 Lea-Ruth C. Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 1865-1914, (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1973). 83-85. 72 Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 1865-1914, 32-47 and 64-109. While many authors have referenced Crane’s popularity in Germany, Wilkens is the first one to provide an in-depth look at Crane’s popularity in this country. Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, 104. 73 Wilkins outline of the reform of the German picture book is similar to how these interventions were outlined by Konody in regards to Crane’s influence on English picture books. Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 29-50, and Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 11-20 and 48-64. 74 Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 89-95. 75 Wilkens, Walter Crane - and the Reform of the German Picture Book, 85-88. 76 Frederic Daniel Weinstein, Walter Crane and the American Book Arts, 1880-1915 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms 1971), 114-120.

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closer inspection.77 This, he argued, was the key visual component to Crane’s success in

Britain and the United States. However, Weinstein does not extend the “Crane Manner”

to other genres.78

There has been sustained interest in Crane’s book works. For example, his

Household Stories from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm from 1882 (fig. 10) has

intrigued many scholars.79 This was the result of a collaboration with his sister, Lucy

Crane (1842–1882) and has been used as a piece to connect many aspects of Crane’s

work, from his own theories on book design, to his thoughts on collaboration between

artists and authors.80 In this book, Lucy provided the translations for Jacob and Wilhelm

Grimm’s fairy tales and demonstrates the significance of illustrated books to education.81

While Crane’s theories on book design, socialism, and art under socialism have

been discussed by scholars individually, it is more difficult to find attempts to isolate the

universal theory that connects all of Crane’s works across media outside of O’Neill’s

77 Weinstein, Walter Crane and the American Book Arts, 114.-120. 78 Weinstein, Walter Crane and the American Book Arts, 114.-120. I will discuss this same aspect of Crane’s work in a later chapter, but rather than using it as a tool of influence for other artists, I will discuss how it is a tool the artist used to subtly graft political messages into his decorative works. 79 John Hutton, "Walter Crane and the Decorative Illustration of Books." Children's Literature 38, no. 1 (2010). Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 56. Paola Spinozzi, "Accurate Reproduction, Ingenious Representation: Lucy and Walter Crane’s Household Stories, from the Collection of the Bros. Grimm (1882)," In Word & Image, 261-272, 3rd ed. Vol. 30. (Routledge, 2014). Helen Stalker, "Sleeping Beauties: Walter Crane and the Illustrated Book" Imaginative Book Illustration Society: Diverse Talents, no. 3 (2009) 7-52. Helen Vera, "Crane, Children and the Cause," The Illustrated Word at the Fin De Siècle, (2006). These authors all discuss Crane’s Household Stories and its importance in representing his ideas on book design and decoration. 80 Spinozzi, "Accurate Reproduction, Ingenious Representation: Lucy and Walter Crane’s Household Stories, from the Collection of the Bros. Grimm (1882),” 263-266. 81 Hutton, "Walter Crane and the Decorative Illustration of Books," 27-31. Spinozzi, "Accurate Reproduction, Ingenious Representation: Lucy and Walter Crane’s Household Stories, from the Collection of the Bros. Grimm (1882),” 261. Laying out Crane’s metaphor of book design as the equivalent of building a house, Hutton summarizes Crane’s writings from a century before describing how each component of the book adds support to the structure, so that the finished object has a continuous and functional flow that compliments the story and captures the readers attention. Focusing on the visual aspects of book design, as they relate to the text, and how each visual component – title page, tailpieces, full-page illustrations etc. – should coordinate with the each other to provide a space for the reader’s complete immersion in the narrative.

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writing. The rhetoric of drawing has been argued by Gerard as the key to understanding

the philosophical and technical skill of Crane’s art; to understand Crane you need to

understand that to Crane the power of art lies in the fundamental craft of drawing.82 As

Crane discussed in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society:

“The bases of all art…might be described as different kinds of drawing.

Each artistic craft…is a method of drawing, each is actually based on a

drawing as a preliminary stage of its existence”83

Gerard believes that this emphasis on drawing as the basis of art is Crane’s contribution

to British art during his lifetime, and essential in understanding how Crane’s wide

assortment of works are all connected. Gerard notes that painting and book illustration

both have their roots in drawing, and in particular the ability to draw a distinctive line is

necessary to relay an easily understood message through graphic art.84

The identification and research by scholars of the political significance of Crane’s

painting, the acknowledgement that his illustrations did more than simply influence other

artists, the appreciation of the quality of Cranes’ work outside of Britain, and the

recognition of there being an underlying connection in his art through the act of drawing

all demonstrate the importance of Crane as an artist. However, the acknowledgment of

Crane’s skills, influence, and acclaim need to be brought together in a study of his work

to fully understand his proficiency in translating a conversation across mediums. This can

be accomplished through the appreciation for, and further study of, the intermedial way

in which Crane worked. The emphasis on the formal qualities of Crane’s work, as

82 David E. Gerard, Walter Crane and the Rhetoric of Art, (London: Nine Elms Press, 1999), 1-2. 83 Walter Crane from “Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society,” Arts and Crafts Essays (Longmans, 1899), as quoted in Gerard, Walter Crane and the Rhetoric of Art, 1-2. 84 Gerard, Walter Crane and the Rhetoric of Art, 7.

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connecting threads that stitch his theories and practice together, is fundamental to the

methods I employ in this thesis through an examination of the art form he was most

famous for, worked in, and theorized about the most: the book.

While many of the book-works created by Crane were intended for children, the

artist openly acknowledged that they were not the only audience who would interact with

them, and tailored his designs to appeal to adult and children alike. These books were

intended to be engaged with on the same intellectual level as Crane’s paintings and

political prints, while providing a more personal and intimate experience to the viewer

that these other, more public works, could not achieve. If it can be accepted that these

books were part of a carefully considered and planned visual conversation by Crane, then

the political content contained in their pages easily becomes apparent, and they become a

part of this conversation, rather than just a beautiful book for the nursery.

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CHAPTER 1:

From Paint to Print, and Back Again: Emblems as Agents of Intermediality and the Significance of the Book in the Art of

Walter Crane

In his Reminiscences, Crane reflected on the differences between drawing for

pleasure in his father’s studio with having to work in Linton’s print studio in order to

make a living after his father’s early passing.

I picked up in my father’s studio and under his eye a variety of artistic

knowledge in an unsystematic way. I was always drawing, and any reading, or

looking at prints or pictures, led back to drawing again…I never enjoyed myself

copying, however, and was always happier drawing direct from Nature or doing

something ‘out of my head.’ … I did not find the 4H pencil put into my hands a

very sympathetic implement, though the surface of the wood was pleasant, but I

dashed off something with it…[Mr. Orrin Smith] told me to work much more

carefully and slowly. Rather depressed, I began again, but my stock of

knowledge, equal to rapid sketching, did not gain by being laboured, and the

drawing soon got as shiny as a black-leaded grate.85

This tension, between the artistic goals and the economic realities in Crane’s career,

followed him throughout his life. One of the ways he solved this problem was by treating

the illustrated book, a commercial commodity, like an extended history painting, which

was the ideal genre to express noble thought and deed.86 In doing so he combined his

85 Crane, Reminiscences, 14, 40, 49. Harvey Orrin Smith was Linton’s partner at the time of Crane’s apprenticeship and assisted in Crane’s training at the studio. 86 David H. Solkin, Art in Britain, 1660-1815. While Solkin discusses the importance of history painting and the challenges it faced in British art, Chapter six, “Making History after the ‘Glorious Revolution’” (48-62) is of particular significance. In this chapter Solkin discusses decorative history panting, the use of

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aspirations to become a public artist with being an artist associated with industrial

methods. Crane achieved this through intermediality. This chapter will discuss the

materiality of Crane’s work and how illustrated books provided an opportunity to deliver

his critique on society to an audience beyond the public spaces of the walls of the gallery

or the crowds of the political rally. It will also explore the place of the book as a work of

art with respect to Crane’s thoughts on the function of total design and why he thought

beauty would stimulate the evolution of British society.87 Illustrated books were

transportable objects, but the book provided a liminal space in which people could safely

interact with the radical concepts contained within its pages.88 This would have been

important to Crane as he was not a revolutionist, but strongly believed that socialism

would come about naturally once citizens were informed of the benefits of the

movement.89 The commitment, he thought, would come once the beholder had an

opportunity to fully contemplate what he or she had read and experienced. To this end,

Crane strived, not only to express beauty in all of his work, but also, as the contemporary

critic, Ralph E. Moreland expressed, “to remove art from the sacred precincts of the

allegorical figures in history painting, and the artist James Thornhill (1675/6-1734). Specifically the way in which Thornhill “refashioned the conventions of a sophisticated courtly art for an audience of ordinary English men and women,” by including objects such as coal, fish, and wool as details in his allegorical scene, items that were quite foreign to the allegorical tradition at this time (51). Thornhill attempted to transform an exclusive form of visual culture into a shared and “inclusive experience by a mass audience of a shared patriotic pride” (53). Crane sought to have his art function in a similar way, where the common man and labourer would feel included in the occurrences of the day through art. However, instead of having viewers connect with past and present victories like Thornhill, Crane attempted to connect his viewers with a process of changing from a present society to a utopian future through socialism. Crane would follow a similar method laid out by Thornhill by including objects and details not usually included in allegorical figures, like the Phrygian bonnet, the socialist torch, or the artist pallet, in order to connect with the labouring and middle classes that the socialists were trying to reach with their campaigns. 87 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 19-51. 88 "liminal, adj.". OED Online. September 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/108471?redirectedFrom=liminal (accessed June 17, 2016). 89 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 13-18, "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," Current Literature, vol. 43, no. 6 (Dec. 1907), 637.

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galleries and academies, and to apply it in varied forms to those interests that lie close to

daily life.”90

This chapter will also explore the visual language that Crane created to express

his ideas intermedially. In the second part of this chapter, I will investigate the creation

and dissemination of Crane’s visual language, and argue that its presence was not

contained merely in the artist’s easel paintings and political prints, but permeated his

commercial art works as well. The ways in which Crane’s emblems travelled from canvas,

to pamphlet, to page will be discussed to show how these visual memoranda combined

symbols in order to warn of the effects of capitalism on British culture and demonstrate

the benefits that a socialist society would offer the nation.91 The narrative of Queen

Summer features many of these emblems, expertly crafted into characters of the story,

that tell the tale of a renaissance in the garden kingdom. Excerpts from its pages will be

used to demonstrate how Crane combined his aspirations to become a public artist with

being an artist associated with industrial methods. To conclude, I will also examine how

Queen Summer resembles Crane’s political cartoons in format and content, through the

use of his political emblems and themes popular with the artist’s socialist prints. This

chapter is important because it discusses Crane’s strategies for dealing with the tensions

between art and commerce. This lays the foundation for the next chapter, which will

90 Ralph E. Moreland, "The Art of Walter Crane," Brush and Pencil 10, no. 5 (1902), 257. Crane also had much more success in his individual pursuits of education at home then he did in a traditional school environment, and he detested the way in which boys were taught without any opportunities for creativity. Since his days at school were so detestable, Crane turned to his father’s library for education, and it can be strongly argued that the seed to create artful, beautiful, and educational books was planted early in his life. Crane, Reminiscences, 30. 91 By “memoranda” I mean that these emblems acted as a device to inspire the subject to be remembered and acted upon in the future, after the viewer had a chance to contemplate their meaning. "memorandum, int. and n.". OED Online. September 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/116345?redirectedFrom=memoranda (accessed July 05, 2016).

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explore Crane’s reconciliation of another set of tensions—fine art and craft—and

socialism’s role in this reconciliation.

Part I- Intermediality and Materiality of the Book

The Fabian Society, which Crane joined in 1885, was a socialist group that was

concerned with education.92 Primarily interested in the middle classes, Crane agreed with

the Fabians’ belief that social revolution would be accomplished through the gradual

saturation of society with new ideas, rather than with protest and revolt.93 Being a part of

this movement, furthermore, allowed Crane to combine the two qualities he deemed most

important for an utopian society: art and education. Crane had been including educational

material in his children’s books for decades before he converted to socialism.94 In light of

this, it may in fact be more accurate to say that his work reflected his concerns about

education before his association with socialism formalized his politics. This concept of

education through illustration is one of the reasons that I believe Crane was so influential

to writers and artists of children’s books throughout his life and long after his death. He

emphasized moral and social education, presenting the lessons in a way that was both

attractive and informative to viewers of the middle and, in particular instances, the

92 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 22. 93 Crane, An Artists Reminiscences, 258. 94 Spencer, Walter Crane, 147. Crane followed the tradition that stories for children would have a moral or educational message contained within them. Fairy tales are an excellent example of this and Crane drew on their structure and content for inspiration throughout his career, a topic discussed in Chapter Three of this thesis. While his works would include references to political and cultural events in their compositions or narratives, Crane also created educational primers that were meant to assist children to read. Grace Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 28, no. 4 (2012), 359-73, discusses some of the educational theories and theorists that Crane worked with.

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working classes.95 Significant to this, the idea of leisure time for the lower classes

became a debated topic during this era and the socialist groups were very vocal about

how this time should be structured.96 Believing that workers were wasting their leisure

time in unproductive ways, socialists campaigned for, and attempted to provide, what

Water’s called “rational” leisure time.97 People could expand their minds in areas like art

and literature through events such public lectures, art exhibitions, musical concerts and

theatrical entertainment, among others.98 Yet, while the communal group events were

important, the individual was also an important figure to socialist groups, therefore they

needed a way to enrich the individual’s leisure time, and the print medium was perfect for

this.99 With rising literacy rates and advances in printing technologies, the periodical and

the book became two of the most consumed venues for visual culture in Victorian society

and the socialists used these forms of communication to spread their ideals throughout

the public and domestic social spheres of England.100

95 Working classes would have access to this material through multiple avenues. One of the most popular places where free art exhibitions would be held was Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, a house run by Samuel Barnett (1844-1913) whose purpose was to provide free education to the residents of one of the poorest areas of London. Exhibitions, lectures, and concerts were held at Toynbee in order to provide more cultural opportunities to poorer citizens that they could partake in after work, in order to expand their minds. Rager, “Smite This Sleeping World Awake", 442. Another establishment that functioned similarly to Toynbee Hall was the Red Cross Hall in Southwark. Founded in 1888by Octavia Hill, a Christian socialist, the Hall was styled in part after Toynbee Hall and offered various classes, lectures, and other forms of entertainment. Designed by Elijah Hoole, the hall and the Red Cross Cottages adjacent to it, alluded to the morality of the Church and both Hill and Hoole wished for the hall to foster a sense of community and identity for the surrounding residents. (O’Neill, WC, 104-108, n224-225) 96 Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914, 17-43. 97 Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914, 22. 98 Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914, 22-25. O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 100-105. Toynbee Hall and the Red Cross Hall were examples of communal places that offered these events. 99 See N. N. Mikhailov’s Socialism and the Rational Needs of the Individual, 1986 for a more concentrated look at the individual in socialist activism and society. 100 Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, 10.

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Opportunities to create public works, which Crane believed to be the best way to

educate, were in short supply.101 Crane had been using his books to educate children for

two decades, so this medium, while commercial, became an innovative method to

amalgamate his profitable career as an illustrator and his newly established role as an

activist. Coupled with Crane’s belief that “every child, one might say human being, takes

in more through his eyes than his ears and I think much more advantage might be taken

of this fact,” the illustrated book provided the platform for Crane to disseminate his ideas

in both text and visual form.102 The book medium and fantastical subject matter, already

popularized by Crane, built on the established audience from his earlier successes, while

introducing a new audience to socialist ideas. The illustrated book was available at a

variety of price levels and it was smaller and transportable, which allowed for sustained

and repeatable individual contemplation by the viewer, qualities that larger paintings or

murals that were site specific could not claim. Perhaps inspired by a review published in

The Times in 1878 that compared the illustrated book to space in a gallery, a place where

viewers could stop and study each image, Crane explored the potential for this medium

and was deeply concerned with the placement of images in text.103 This is exemplified by

Crane in his Decorative Illustration of Books:

In a journey through a book it is pleasant to reach the oasis of a picture or an

ornament, to sit awhile under the palms, to let our thoughts unburdened stray, to

101 Solkin, David, “Introduction,” in Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 5. 102 Crane, Walter. Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New. Third ed. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1968, 128. 103As quoted in, Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, 12. Lundin might have been discussing the "Christmas Books" review from 1879, which discusses the cover of “The Royal Nursery Picture Book” by Ward, Lock, and Co. as resembling a gallery due to the pictures on the cover, but the response evoked from Lundin’s description of the book is superior when discussing the benefits of illustrated books as individual objects.

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drink of other intellectual waters, and to see the ideas we have been pursuing,

perchance, reflected in them. Thus we end, as we begin, with images.104

In Moreland’s 1902 review of the artist’s work, he claims that “Crane’s art

appears to the best advantage on the printed page, and not in the formal frame.”105 In my

opinion, Moreland is correct, however, with relatively few Walter Crane paintings extant,

we are at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, Queen Summer is an excellent example of

Crane’s artistic propaganda in illustrated books that were more than decorative texts

created for enjoyment.106 A well planned and executed art piece was meant to be

attractive but educational to both children and adults. The fusion of the fantastical with a

critique of modernity, allows the reader a sense of what could be called enthralled

separation – at once distanced from the events being depicted, but consumed with a

fascination, a need to witness the unfolding of events. By moving the representation of

modern issues into a fantastical world, the viewer can interact with contemporary

concerns without consequence, and when they emerge from the fantasy, the ideas

presented stay with them subconsciously as part of a story, or even a memory.

Crane first experimented with this combination in his paintings. He had great

success, for example, with The Skeleton in Armour from 1883, inspired by Henry

104 Crane, Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New, 5–6. 105 Moreland, "The Art of Walter Crane," 267. 106 Crane’s books contain many design elements important to the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts Movements, particularly the emphasis on beauty in the finished piece. While the emphasis on beauty has often lead to the assumption that Aestheticism was apolitical, there is a political nature to creating utopian spaces in interiors or prints. In my opinion it is this political aspect of beauty that interested Crane and is what makes his books agents for a particular form propaganda; one that is slightly ambiguous but beautiful. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller discusses the politics of Aestheticism in her essay, “William Morris, Print Culture, and the Politics of Aestheticism.” See Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, “William Morris, Print Culture, and the Politics of Aestheticism,” (Modernism/Modernity 15, no. 3, 2008) 477–502.

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Wadsworth Longfellow’s (1807-1882) poem first published in 1841 (fig. 11).107 A dining

room frieze intended to adorn the walls of Vinland, a residence in Newport, Rhode Island,

it recounts the legendary pre-Colombian settling of Newport by the Vikings.108 Crane’s

version centres on a Viking warrior and the tower he constructs for his bride-to-be. Her

father, unhappy with the match, tries to reclaim his daughter and the two lovers flee. The

frieze ends tragically, the girl dies and her lover buries her under the tower he built before

falling on his own sword—his skeleton guards her resting place for eternity. The tower,

which brackets each scene, becomes the central motif for Crane’s rendition of the tale

and, as the narrative progresses, the construction is gradually completed.

At the base of the tower, Crane places details incongruous for a Norse legend: all

of his labourers are clad in the Phrygian bonnet (fig. 12).109 The labourers struggle under

the weight of their work, often depicted in poses similar to Atlas suffering under the

weight of the world. Like Atlas, Crane saw the labourer as responsible for supporting

society and that capitalism made their load harder to bear. This would eventually lead to

society’s demise, as the labourer is crushed beneath the burden of capitalism.110

Socialism was the solution to this impending doom and so the Phrygian cap became a

beacon, calling the beholder to the movement. Crane would go on to deploy this same

motif in his later political prints, for example The Strong Man, featured in the May issue

of Justice in 1897 (fig.13). The hybrid of classical mythology, revolutionary symbolism,

and the contemporary British labour movement was a favourite of Crane’s and would be

107 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Anthony, A. V. S. The Skeleton in Armour, J. R. Osgood, 1877. 108 O’Neill, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," 150. 109 The Phrygian Bonnet was a symbol used during the French Revolution as a sign of liberty and freedom. The cap would later be adapted by English radicals and then socialists to connote these same ideas of equality and liberty. O’Neill, Morna. “Art and Labour’s Cause is One”: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915. Exhibition catalogue. Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery, 2008, 1. 110 O’Neill, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," 186-188.

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drawn on extensively by the artist in the years to come. The Skeleton in Armour was the

first commissioned painting that included this motif. The following year, Crane

publically declared his allegiance to the socialist movement and the hybrid motif became

a favourite in his arsenal of emblems, found across all the mediums in which he worked .

The Skeleton in Armour is also significant because it foreshadows Crane’s future

method in book illustration. The evidence strongly suggests that this painting was the

turning point for Crane’s relationship with narrative and politics. The frieze reads like a

scroll, with the narrative stretched across a space that involved the active participation of

the viewer and the towers act as page markers for the action within them. Once Crane

completed the frieze in Italy, the seven canvases were shipped to Newport, where they

were stretched onto wooden frames and installed at Vinland.111 Crane’s studio was too

small to fit the large stretchers so, to complete the commission, Crane manufactured a

support system to hold the canvases. Stretched over two rollers, Crane wound the

completed paintings up; the viewer would, therefore, read the painting as an unfolding of

the story.112 Crane, furthermore, saw the revolutionary potential in decorative art because

the objects were for the most part portable, but, more importantly, as commodities, he

was using the tools of the market place to undermine capitalism. These objects were not

merely hybrid emblems, but inhabited hybrid spaces. The dining room at Vinland, for

example, was situated in a domestic sphere, but was also accessible to the public through

social events and gatherings.113 However, as he did not receive many commissions for

paintings, he turned to his most successful genre.

111 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 155. 112 O’Neill, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," 162. 113 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 162.

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In 1891 Crane visited America for a retrospective of his work, and while there he

experienced some of the setbacks that faced an outspoken socialist activist.114 While

visiting Boston, Crane stated that the Chicago Anarchists who were put to death in 1887

had been too severely punished for expressing their political beliefs.115 Due to this, he

had his funding withdrawn, events in his honour cancelled, and faced a public backlash

that threatened to bring his artistic and social prospects in America to ruins.116 Likewise

in Britain, his overtly political works did not meet expectations for exhibitions or sales. In

1887 he withdrew his painting The Riddle of the Sphinx from the Grosvenor Gallery

because of its poor placement, which was due, in Crane’s opinion, to the owner’s dislike

of the political messages contained within the piece.117

While his paintings were not always accepted if they were blatantly political,

Crane consistently recycled his book illustrations for the political arena, blurring the line

between his political cartoons with familiar tales from the nursery.118 Often heralded as

reshaping the visual culture of British socialism, the narratives of Crane’s political prints

featuring tales of social change, with the characters of capitalism and socialism as the

antagonists and protagonists, were not confined merely to the political rally or campaign

leaflet.119 While most obvious in his political prints, Crane’s narratives of social change

could be found in most of his work from 1870 onwards, from his The Fate of Persephone

(1878), and as discussed, The Skeleton in Armour (1883), Freedom (1885) and Queen

114 Spencer, Walter Crane, 172-173, O'Neill, Morna. "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago." Art History 38, no. 1 (2015), 119-120. 115 "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," 637. 116 "The Reminiscences of a Socialist Artist," 637. 117 O’Neill, “Art and Labour’s Cause is One”: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915., 33. 118 Helen Stalker, "Sleeping Beauties: Walter Crane and the Illustrated Book," in The IBIS Journal. 3, Diverse Talents (London: Imaginative Book Illustration Society, 2009), 43. 119 Morna O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 91. Stalker, "Sleeping Beauties: Walter Crane and the Illustrated Book," 28.

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Summer (1891).120 Yet, the subtlety with which Crane insinuated his social critique into

his exhibited paintings and commercial materials, including his wallpapers, has been

undervalued by historians.121 Crane’s ability to intermingle social critique with elements

from myths and fairy tales is one that deserves more attention in regards to its execution

and reception–an undertaking that this chapter will commence with a focus on the

invention and placement of Crane’s own iconography.

Part II – Emblems

According to Crane, one of the best places to situate a moral message was in

decorative art, which, during this era, was widely disseminated across a variety of

mediums but could also be considered art of public and, like his experience with The

Skeleton in Armour, domestic spheres. While most British artists during this period

associated the decorative with interior décor, there was a precedent for situating paintings

in public interiors, and this provided artists like Crane the opportunity to reach a wider

120 There are many more examples of Crane’s socialism permeating his art, including the work he continued to produce into the beginning of the twentieth century including A Flower Wedding: as Described by Two Wallflowers (1905) and The Briar Rose (1907), that deserve more attention then they can be given in this paper. 121 O’Neill is the leading scholar on Walter Crane and has written extensively on the emblems that appear in his work. Due to this she will be heavily referenced in this chapter as currently Greg Smith. Grace Brockington, Aesop Guy are the only other two scholars who have dealt directly with Crane’s iconography as opposed to his reputation as a children’s book illustrator or influence for other artists. While O’Neill focuses predominately on Crane’s paintings in order to show how his voice needs to be included alongside artists such as Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), William Morris, and John Ruskin (1819-1900) when discussing nineteenth century aesthetics, she does not disregard Crane’s career as an illustrator or designer. Borrowing from across Crane’s collection of works and iconography of O’Neill’s scholarship demonstrates how Crane’s painting practice is part of a larger decorative dialogue that makes up his oeuvre. One of the ways in which O’Neill does this is by tracing some of the figures and symbols that appear in Crane’s work quite frequently, such as the Phrygian bonnet, the classical female figure, or the figure of the labourer. In fact one of the greatest contributions that O’Neill has given to the understanding of Crane is the realization of the importance of the labourer figure to Crane’s artistic and political discourse, which has been overshadowed by his fairy tales after the artists death, and the loss of many of his paintings. O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, Art and Labour’s Cause is One, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior "A Political Theory of Decoration, 1901-1910","Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics”, all discuss the use of emblems or symbols and their importance to Crane’s work.

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audience.122 Basing his work on the idea that all art was in essence decorative,

intermediality became paramount to Crane in his artistic endeavours to create total design

that included both the private and the public.123 To accomplish this, Crane created a

collection of emblems that would express his thoughts on beauty, socialism, capitalism,

freedom, and labour. Termed “picture-writing,” a set of emblems created by the artist that

encapsulates the concepts Crane wished to address in his art, this language, which was

known in his lifetime, was lost after his death when his work became unstitched from its

contexts and dispersed in various collections.124 Furthermore, in these collections the

importance of intermediality in Crane’s work was undermined by object-based

organization. While this language of symbols has been recuperated in the study of his

paintings, the way in which it was used in his illustrated books has yet to be fully

explored.

In order to demonstrate how Crane’s “picture-writing” could make decorative

wallpaper political and political emblem artistic I will reveal how his iconography

functions throughout the plot of Queen Summer. To begin, a selection of emblems will be

discussed to show how Crane built upon the connotations already associated with certain

motifs in order to connect them to the socialist movement and propaganda. Following this

I will explain how the artist’s repertoire of emblems came into existence and, in

122 O’Neill, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," 158-161. 123O’Neill, "A Political Theory of Decoration, 1901-1910," 288. As Moreland wrote: “To [Crane] art was not art unless it was beautiful, and a picture lacked at least one of the elements of a picture unless it was decorative. His love of symbolism gave him a natural predilection toward figurative art, and as a consequence, this element can be traced quite as readily in his designs as in his finished pictures.” Moreland, “The Art of Walter Crane,” 264; Joanna Banham, “Walter Crane and the Decoration of the Artistic Interior” in Greg Smith, and Sarah Hyde, eds. Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, Exhibition catalogue (London: Lund Humphries in association with Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, 1989), 47. 124 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 10. Walter Crane, An Artists Reminiscences, (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 55.

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particular, what influenced their creation, supported by Crane’s own writing on the

importance of emblems to design.125 A visual comparison of illustrations from Queen

Summer and a selection of Crane’s other work, such as Freedom (1885) and The

Capitalist Vampire (1885), establishes how, by including emblems at certain points in the

narrative, Crane added what John Barrell called an “irreducible indeterminacy” to his

book illustrations, a double narrative which could be acknowledged or disregarded

depending on the reader's preferences (fig. 14-15).126

As the artist of the nursery, Crane already had a strong public following before he

became active in politics. His successful line with Routledge demonstrated how Crane

combined visuals with text in new and colourful ways that revolutionized the field of

children’s literature. This was a reflection of his concern with access to education and the

ways visual art could be utilized in the classroom.127 For Crane, fairy tales, and fables

were undervalued materials, as their characters, morals, and narratives were: “fish to the

moral net of the emblem designer.”128 He drew upon this fascination with fables and fairy

tales to engage the reader and transform the stories into what one scholar has termed

“political wolves in sheep’s clothing.”129 But these hidden stories were not challenging to

125 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One, 9. 126 John Barrell, "Radicalism, Visual Culture, and Spectacle in the 1790s," Romanticism on the Net 46, no. "Romantic Spectacle" (May 2007): .n.p. 127 Brockington outlines two illustrated books that Crane contributed to in terms of educational material. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Walter Crane, The Golden Primer (London and Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1884) and Nellie Dale, with pictures by Walter Crane, The Dale Readers First Primer (London: George Philip & Son; Liverpool: Philip, Son, & Nephew, 1899). Grace Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 28, no. 4 (2012), 359-73. 128 Walter Crane, The Bases of Design, (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1898) 255. O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 19-20. 129 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One, 20.

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decipher. as the key to understanding them could be found in Crane’s visual and written

works.130

Crane, who was concerned with the evolution of society and language in his

writings on political and educational reform, understood that “the historical relationship

between design and language opened up an opportunity for political change” which he

would exploit in his artistic endeavours through the figures he employed as emblems.131

The figures Crane chose to imbue with socialist meaning were often retrieved from past

civilizations, with the Egyptians, Greeks, and Renaissance Italy being of particular

interest to Crane, as they were all civilizations that had strong interests in public art.132 It

was through public works of art that Crane believed the masses would be best educated

on current events, and it was this model of “art for all” that Crane wanted to return to in a

socialist Britain. However, Britain did not have the market for the public works that

Crane wanted so he incorporated figures and stories from these eras into his iconography

in order to use their narratives for inspiration and propaganda.

Consisting of repurposed classical female figures as the embodiments of art and

beauty; St. George dressed as a labourer, who slays the serpent or dragon of capitalism;

the angel of socialism that frees the chained citizens of Britain; the bundle of rods of

trade unionism; and the Phrygian bonnet, Crane deploys these among other emblems to

130 Dr. Andrea Korda explores the ways in which visual literacy assists the reader in deciphering the messages contained in Crane’s work. She outlines how actively and critically engaging with, or reading, images yields further information to the reader, which is especially relevant when considering Crane. Andrea, Korda “Learning from ‘good pictures’: Walter Crane’s Picture Books and Visual Literacy,” (Word & Image, forthcoming) 8-11. 131 Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 362. 132 This is discussed at various points in many of Crane’s published works including Bases of Designs, The Claims of Decorative Art, and Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New, which all feature written accounts of what past civilizations did well in various aspects of art and design.

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connect his designs to broader concepts in history and a lineage of activism.133 These

symbols were combined in a continuous narrative in Crane’s paintings, or act as the main

characters in his books, with the idea that they would function as mediators between

mediums, thus creating a single narrative that runs throughout his oeuvre. Deciphering

this narrative was possible by attending public lectures as well as the classes Crane taught

at varying institutions across England, in which he discussed the use of emblem in

decoration and often used his own work as examples.134

Crane took the familiar classically dressed woman or medieval knight and by

adorning the figure in a Phrygian bonnet or carrying the torch of liberty, added another

connotation that would connect the figure and its past associations to socialism. This new

connection would register in the spectator’s memory so that the emblem could be

identifiable as it was transferred to different stories and mediums. Crane summed up this

concept in his Bases of Design (1898):

Allegorical art has, too, a modern popular form in the region of political

satire and caricature, often potent to stir or to concentrate political

feeling…the effective way in which the political situation is put into some

piece of familiar symbolism which all can recognize and remember. In the

region of poetic design symbolism must always hold its place…[the artist]

must use figurative language, and seek the beautiful and permanent

images of emblematic design.135

This translation of emblems is one of the ways in which Crane connected the numerous

styles and forms he worked in. The female personification of beauty could be found

133 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 9-10. 134 Crane, Reminiscences, 299, 307-309, 327, 415. 135 Crane, Bases of Design, 257-258. Emphasis mine.

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throughout his paintings, but it also made an appearance in many of his book-works as

well, just as his angel of socialism appeared across paintings, prints, wallpapers, and

book pages, which I will discuss below in relation to Queen Summer.

An example of this intermediality would be the aforementioned Phrygian bonnet,

an important and recognizable symbol of the French Revolution that also makes an

appearance in the frieze of Corona Vitae (1889) and is a regular component in his

political prints, including A Garland for May Day (1895), Solidarity of Labour (1889),

and The Workers May Pole (1894) (fig. 16-18). 136 This symbol was also incorporated in

his book illustrations, most prominently in his rendition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene

(1895) where it adorned the head of the characters Belphoebe and Britomart.137 The

Faerie Queene would also influence some of Crane’s political cartoons, including his

frontispiece for The New Party of 1894 in which characters from the story are

reconfigured into protagonists for socialism (fig. 19). The emblem is an important

element to understanding the intermediality of Queen Summer, and Crane discusses it

extensively in his publications on art.

In chapter seven of The Bases of Designs (1898), for example, entitled “Of the

Symbolic Influence, or Emblematic Element in Design,” Crane discusses the history of

emblems from the Egyptians to modern times, and their use in art and religion as

important tools in communicating to a wider public:

While much early ornament, as we have seen, is traceable to a constructive

origin, another kind, or another branch of the tree of design is traceable to a

symbolic origin, and springs from the endeavour to express thought - to find a

136 O’Neill, "Paintings from Nowhere: Walter Crane, Socialism and the Aesthetic Interior," 152. 137 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 61-64.

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succinct language in which to express some sense of the great powers of nature,

and their influence upon the daily life of man - to embody even in a pictorial

emblem, symbol, or allegory his primitive conceptions of the order of the

universe itself.138

With a focus on progression, Crane would often lecture on how it was important to know

“that the letters of our alphabet were once pictures, symbols, or abstract signs of entities

and actions, and grew more and more abstract until they became arbitrary marks—the

familiar characters that we know.”139 Therefore, art, which transmitted ideas and concepts

visually, would be understood at an earlier age than written or verbal languages, and a

well-designed and aesthetically pleasing piece would be more conducive to educating the

masses in both academic and moral matters.140 But language, written or otherwise, is a

system that is dependent on signs and signifiers that have agreed upon connotations in

order to be both understood and effective. In the absence of this system, Crane created his

own by combining elements of other recognizable and popular subjects, such as fairy

tales, myths, religion, and issues and events in popular culture.

The Esperanto movement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century greatly

interested Crane, who was concerned with educational reform and art’s place in this

restructuring.141 Esperanto is a constructed language that was invented by Ludwig

138 Crane, The Bases of Design, 237-38, 230. Crane lists emblems that he sees as important, such as the sun, Persephone, and Pandora, all stories that he uses in his art. 139 Walter Crane, Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896), 5. 140 Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 362-363. Also discussed in Crane, An Artists Reminiscences 141 The most recent scholar to explore Crane’s involvement with education is Andrea Korda in her forthcoming article, “Learning from ‘good pictures’: Walter Crane’s Picture Books and Visual Literacy,” which looks at original books penned and pictured by Crane as objects that aid in learning visual literacy; a

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Zamenhof in the 1870’s, on the premise that it would be easy to learn and international in

its scope.142 Crane’s interest in this invented language is easy to understand, as he held

similar ideas regarding art as a universal language.143 I argue that his interest in Esperanto,

combined with his interests in education, highly influenced the construction of Crane’s

own visual language of emblems. Crane would often argue that design was also a

language, and an important one, that had far-reaching historical roots perceivable in the

hieroglyphics of Egypt and other pictographic languages of the past.144

Hieroglyphic languages, which combined design and literacy, became the

foundation on which Crane built his own language of emblems. However, while Crane

held strong opinions on the intelligence and perceptiveness of his viewers, modern

critiques have been somewhat divided on the success of Crane’s language.145 The few

scholars that have focused on Crane’s artistic language have done so primarily through

the lens of his paintings. While Smith argues that Crane did develop a public language

with his art that could be understood by all who encountered it, he states that only a small

audience who visited exhibitions would have the chance to view this language. This is

because Smith believes these symbols only appeared in Crane’s paintings.146 O’Neill, on

the other hand, discusses at great length how themes that interested the artist were not

confined to single mediums, but, rather, reveal themselves across Crane’s oeuvre, even in

learned ability that allows you to read images actively and critically, similar to reading text. Korda, “Learning from ‘good pictures’: Walter Crane’s Picture Books and Visual Literacy,” Word & Image, 1. 142 Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 359. 143 Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 362-364. 144 Crane, The Bases of Design, 222-258. Crane, An Artists Reminiscences, 54-56. Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 362. 145 Smith argues that Crane’s visual language was only in his paintings and would therefore be available to small select audience, Smith Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 17; However, Dölvers, Korda, and O’Neill, have all begun to engage critically with Crane’s illustrated books, as possible channels for political expression. 146 Smith Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 17.

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places one would not expect them to be.147 While O’Neill focuses predominately on

Crane’s paintings, she regularly draws on examples from Crane’s published and

unpublished works as examples for the complete integration of iconography in Crane’s

art.148

Yet, while the pervasiveness of Crane’s emblems have been debated, what scholars

seem to agree on is the importance of nature and classical mythology as sources of

inspiration for many his symbols.149 Nature could be found in the mythology that had

been passed down through the ages, but could also be found in religion, and was a topic

of scientific discussion during this era. As Crane writes in his The Claims of Decorative

Art (1892):

The ancient religions of the world were nothing but figurative systems [,]

personifications and symbols of the forces of nature, varying in different

countries as they were gradually evolved from some perhaps common primitive

type, or grew naturally out of the independent imaginings of the human mind;

certainly all have elements in common, and varieties of the same conceptions

appear again and again, through endless modifications and developments, as the

same plants vary in different soils, and under different conditions.150

Not only did nature provide Crane a framework through which to discuss aesthetics and

socialism, but objects in nature also allowed Crane to combine the morals and lessons

from Christian and pagan stories with scientific ideas on evolution for a Victorian 147 At and Labour’s Cause is One is dedicated to showing how Socialism appeared across mediums in Crane’s work in the shape of his interest and interaction with Manchester. O’Neill Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, tracks motifs throughout his works, focusing on the reoccurring images and plots that appear throughout Crane’s oeuvre, Morna O’Neill "A Political Theory of Decoration, 1901-1910,” 287-311. 148 An example would be the sphinx discussed in the introduction of this thesis. 149 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 14. O’Neill, Spencer 150 Crane, The Claims of Decorative Art, 24.

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audience. He grafted new ideas with accepted imagery in order to increase public

awareness of socialist ideals.151 By combining elements from a variety of sources, Crane

was able to formulate his own controversial and, at times, radical ideas on socialism and

embedded them in stories that were already popular to ensure the continuation of his

career.152 It is through symbols influenced by nature, myth, and religion that Crane best

communicates the prospects of political change, and Queen Summer is one of the many

products that expands upon this overarching interest in Crane’s work, while incorporating

many of his established socialist characters.

The main characters in Queen Summer are anthropomorphized roses and lilies who

are battling for the favour of the Queen of Summer. The two factions of flowers are

emblems of two forms of art: the lily represents fine art, such as painting that is

championed by the Royal Academy, and the rose represents the Arts and Crafts,

championed by Crane and seen as lesser art by Royal Academicians.153 If we take this to

be true, and Chapter Two will demonstrate its validity, then the underlying narrative of

Queen Summer would be that the separation of the artist and the craftsman, of fine art and

craft, is causing undue strife in British art when the two are actually one and the same. In

a socialist society there would be no division, leading to a renaissance of beauty in art.

This renaissance would be made possible through the artistic freedom that socialism

provided, and this freedom is represented in the form of the angel of socialism.

The angel became an important emblem for Crane, as both a symbol of hope and a 151 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 13-14. Crane, The Claims of Decorative Art, 24. Grafting will be discussed at length in Chapter Two. 152 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 91. These figures would sometimes be slightly varied to fit the circumstances of the art but still recognizable. This is partly due to Crane voluntarily creating many different forms of memorabilia for the socialist movement, whether he was connected to a particular group or not, but also due to the fact that Crane, who worked in such a wide variety of mediums, had to alter certain figures based on what context they were appearing in. 153 A much more detailed explanation of this will be discussed in Chapter Two.

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symbol of despair, depending on how he depicted it. When it was depicted with its

feathered wings and blazing torch it represented freedom, and when it was depicted with

the wings of a bat, it embodied despondency; these would eventually become the

personifications of socialism and capitalism in Crane’s work and they both appear in

Queen Summer.154 First appearing in 1885, Crane’s angel of freedom became cemented

in his iconography during the summer of this year when it was featured in two of his

most prominent works: Freedom (1885), an oil painting that was exhibited at the

Grosvenor Gallery, and The Capitalist Vampire (1885), which was Crane’s debut piece as

a political cartoonist.155 The two angels represent freedom–artistic, political, economic–or

lack thereof, in society and play an interesting part in Queen Summer and as a unifying

motif throughout his oeuvre.

Freedom and The Capitalist Vampire feature another emblem—the supine figure of

the captive labourer–that would become central to Crane’s repertoire of emblems and

suffuse many of his political and decorative works. These figures would become

cornerstones to a pervasive visual culture of socialism that Crane circulated across

mediums in order to unify the narratives of his paintings, illustrations, political designs,

and wallpapers.156

The angel appears sporadically throughout the narrative, at points where major

events drive the plot forward. We first see an angel in Queen Summer on the first page of

text where he sets the scene of the story. The hourglass and the rising sun–both emblems

that were adopted by the socialist movement and represent the arrival and new day of

154 Brockington, "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art," 364. 155 Morna O'Neill, "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago." Art History 38, no. 1 (2015), 113. 156 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 59.

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socialism—immediately follow him on the next page.157 However one of the more

interesting depictions of the angel appears on page six of the book, where blowing flower

petals surround the angel (fig. 20). What makes this image particularly provocative is the

text that accompanies it and the following page. The text reads: “And as the winds about

them played, and shook the flowers or disarrayed, a whispered word among them goes of

how the Lily flouts the Rose.”158 The angel of socialism is bolstering the winds of change

that are shaking the flower denizens to their roots, as murmurs of discord between the

lilies and the roses, the high and low arts, sweeps through the kingdom and rattles the

status-quo.

The discord erupts into a confrontation and page twenty-three shows the fate of the

two champions, locked in a struggle on the ground their weapons interlocked into a cross,

trapping the combatants beneath their combined weight (fig. 21). The cross is a symbol

that appears rarely in Crane’s work, as he was an agnostic with no strong religious

inclinations.159 Yet, while religion had been closely connected with art through the

centuries, as churches were often the main patrons of artists, Crane depicts his figures

being oppressed by the cross onto which they are connected. While the figures struggle to

rise beneath the weight of religion and the traditions in art and patronage that come with

it, the Queen of Summer, who is the personification of art and beauty that is featured

prominently in Crane’s work, descends from her throne in order to liberate them with the

socialist message of change and unity (fig. 22). The personification of beauty and the

angel of socialism appear together on page twenty-seven walking in unison with Crane’s

inspirational text, “life and love close linked together, and strong to bear times wintry

157 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 25. 158 Crane, Queen Summer, 6-7. 159 Crawford, “Crane, Walter (1845–1915),” n.p.

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weather;” a motto for Crane’s life and career, where his art and socialism were all

intertwined, providing support for him when his career and personal life became difficult

(fig. 23).160

The image of beauty and socialism walking together is followed directly by another

page dedicated to the angel of socialism, one holding a torch, another symbol of

socialism that is shaped like an apple–the fruit of knowledge (fig. 24).161 Here Crane once

again combines (and perhaps offers a corrective for) socialist iconography with religious

imagery, as the apple of Eve becomes combined with the torch of socialism, offering the

knowledge and light through which to enter and appreciate socialist discourse.162

However, Crane has altered the connotations of the fruit of knowledge in his depiction.

Rather than the apple leading to the expulsion from the harmonious Garden of Eden, the

apple, if accepted from the angel of socialism, now offers a way into the utopian garden

of Crane’s envisioned socialist society. This offer of knowledge is followed by a

sequence of images depicting harmony between artists, poets, musicians, families, and

labourers, a goal that Crane believed would be achieved through the implementation of

socialism (fig. 25-28 pages 31-33,36). And in these images, the intermediality of Crane’s

work and life is shown as the artist depicts himself painting in a peaceful garden in a

costume that he would have made and don in 1897 for the celebrations of Queen

160 Crane, Queen Summer, 27. Crane’s Reminiscences outlines in great detail the intermingling of personal and professional life. Through stores and letters Crane outlines what influential people he met during what years, and what artworks these meetings corresponded with, or influenced. 161 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 109. 162 The orange tree appears quite frequently throughout Crane’s oeuvre and acquires a political meaning in his use of the fruit. Some contemporaries to Crane believed that the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden was actually an orange tree. Taking the apple of Christian mysticism and replacing it with the orange in his visual works, Crane took this figure of the orange tree and made it the agent of redemption. Placed on the cover of books, in wallpapers, paintings, prints, and illustrations the orange tree and its fruit exemplifies hope and the recovery of paradise. However, Crane would occasionally flip between the apple and the orange as his restorative image. O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 85.

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Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (fig. 29).163

Returning to the supine figure, it appears most prominently across two illustrations

on pages thirty-four and thirty-five, where fallen Lily and Rose knights lay injured on the

grass. However, while Freedom and The Capitalist Vampire both have the angel of

socialism coming down to liberate or rescue them, the flower knights have their opposing

counterparts assisting them in their recovery (fig. 30-31). This is significant for the plot

of the story, and for the message that Crane is attempting to communicate, which is that

under socialism the discord between craft and fine art would disappear and art would be

unified and accessible by all. The cross is seen once more in this dual image, but its size

and influence on the combatants has shrunk considerably, allowing the two streams of art

to break free of discord and proceed to a future, filled with collaboration and harmony

(fig. 31). Queen Summer is in fact a product of this collaboration between art forms and

draws on influences from across mediums in Crane’s oeuvre.

The style of drawing and layout of Queen Summer differs noticeably from the

design of the other flower books. While the books from this genre consist of outlined

characters against relatively simple backgrounds, as seen in the poppy illustration from

Flora’s Feast (fig. 32), the background setting of the illustrations in Queen Summer are

much more defined, at times even resembling the floral patterns of wallpaper. While the

decorative gothic-medieval subject matter of Crane’s own imagination is epitomized in

the flower subjects of Queen Summer, the layout of image and text on the pages of this

volume are of particular interest when compared with the political prints he was creating

163 Compare figure twenty-nine with figure twenty-five, where the artist illustrated in Queen Summer is wearing the same outfit that Crane would later wear for a costume party, the only difference being the actual costume’s design features roses rather than fleur-de-lis. It is also important to note that the artist in the garden resembles the artist in appearance as well. Crane had featured a self-portrait in another work of this year as well, The Triumph of Labour (1891).

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during this time.164 The way in which the images are framed and the text laid out is

reminiscent of Crane’s many political prints, as seen in the New Era (1894) (fig. 19),

where he made a practice of containing his images in double borders with the text

contained in scrolls. This he duplicated in the images of Queen Summer.

While, at first glance, this may seem like an inconsequential design aspect to

focus on, it is important to remember that Crane was very particular about and aware of

his reputation as an artist and how he was represented to the public. He would not have

produced a work of art, much less allowed it to be published under his name, without

careful consideration of its design qualities and layout. This is exemplified by the artist’s

anger when publishers used his name without his permission to promote one of Kate

Greenaway’s books in 1878 and when he attempt to regain the rights to the printing

blocks for his sixpenny Toy Books in the mid-1890’s.165 While Queen Summer shares the

same floral anthropomorphism and garden setting as the other ‘flower books’ it is the

strong connection to “Merrie England” that sets it apart and connects it more to Crane’s

socialist imagery. As I will discuss in Chapter Three, much of his socialist imagery and

theories drew on this golden age of Merrie England for influence and inspiration.166

While mythological and religious symbols were significant to Crane, for their long-

established importance and ability to be easily recognized and understood by all, the

164 Spencer, Walter Crane, 137-138. William Morris, who introduced him to structured politics in the early 1880’s, inspired Crane and their ideas on a decorative medieval England were similar. Understanding Morris’s ideas on the medieval and beauty are useful in understanding the early developments of Crane’s political art. For a more thorough examination of Morris and his involvement in socialism and the Arts and Crafts Movement see Hart, Arts and Crafts Objects, (2010) and in particular pages 121-129 for a closer examination of the importance of the medieval to Morris. 165 Crane, An Artists Reminiscences. 178-180. The correspondence between Crane and the publishers of John Lane & Co. are currently held in the Houghton Library and are discussed in Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 24. 166 Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 31-32.

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largest influence on Crane’s emblems was nature.167 From the earliest discussions of his

artistic influences, Crane consistently cited nature as his inspiration and believed that the

beauty of nature held the answers to society’s problems, often likening the coming of

socialism with the coming of spring.168 Many of his most popular works of art featured

nature scenes or characters that drew heavily from nature. This is most apparent in his

flower books, in which anthropomorphized flower characters drew delight from all

audiences. Nevertheless, the flower characters in Queen Summer are of particular

importance when placed alongside Crane’s socialist iconography and lectures on art. In

the next chapter, the implications of Crane’s choice of the lily and the rose as

protagonists in Queen Summer will be discussed because for Crane, nature was a true

form of expression, and a flower could speak as loudly as any man if given the right

platform.

167 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 121. 168 O’Neill, Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics," 293; Smith, Walter Crane 1845-1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist, 14.

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Chapter Two: Lessons from Flora: The Political and Symbolic Importance of the Lily and the Rose to

Walter Crane’s Queen Summer

'And can all the flowers talk?' 'As well as you can,' said the Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal louder.'169

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (1871)

Flowers have occupied a central position in art as subjects and as symbols. Aptly

put by Beverly Seaton, “It is clear that, whatever it meant to the thoughtful Victorian, a

primrose was more than a primrose.”170 This sentiment certainly applies when looking at

the works of Walter Crane, in which the image presented is much more than ink on a

page, or paint on canvas. Crane envisioned a culture that trusted that viewers would

understand the emblems implemented in artists’ work. This trust would be built by

educators who would teach the interpretation of signs at an early age.171 Crane embraced

this in his artwork: grafted onto the beautiful and decorative images were critiques on

Victorian society, politics, and the British Empire.172

In this chapter, I will examine the significance of the flowers Crane chose as his

characters and the symbolism attached to them. I argue that Crane was not depicting the

lily that was common in the gardens of England at this time. Rather, the artist was

referencing the emblem of the fleur-de-lei; more specifically, the Florentine lily. This

169 Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking Glass,” Alice in Wonderland, edited by Donald J. Gray, second ed. (Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992) 121. 170 Beverly Seaton, “Considering the Lilies: Ruskin's "Proserpina" and Other Victorian Flower Books,” Victorian Studies (28, no. 2, 1985), 255. 171 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2. 172 Seaton, "Considering the Lilies: Ruskin's "Proserpina" and Other Victorian Flower Books", 259. One of the best examples of Walter Crane providing a critique of the British Empire in an attractive form can be seen in Felix Driver’s discussion of Crane’s Imperial Federation: Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886. See Driver, Felix. "In Search of the Imperial Map: Walter Crane an the Image of Empire." In History Workshop Journal, 146-157. Issue. 69. London: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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motif was appropriated by the artist because it symbolized a utopian artistic society that

he wished to encourage in England through socialism. Like fifteenth-century Italy,

Britain would also emerge from the dark age of capitalism and experience a rebirth.

Nevertheless, Crane wanted this renaissance to be English in character, so his other motif

was the rose. Not the large and showy hybrids from France and areas in Asia, but the

hardy, small budded, climbing perennial, that was pale in colour and native to the Isles.

Crane’s human-floral hybrids, therefore, represent two different societies; the “Rose

citizens,” who represent the medieval England of Crane’s imagination and the “Lily

citizens,” who represent the idyllic past of the Italian Renaissance—two ideal societies

that Crane believed exemplified the qualities that socialism would provide for modern

society.173

As discussed in the previous chapter, Crane placed figures from his invented

picture-writing across his art in order to add political undertones to the narratives in his

work. While the pages of Queen Summer are littered with more overt socialist

iconography, I argue that the rose and lily characters are also emblems with strong

connections to Crane’s socialism; but, more importantly, they address another problem. I

argue that the lily and the rose are emblems that represent fine art and craft, and their

conflict represents the tension between high and low art that Crane faced during his

career. Through socialism, this tension would be reconciled.

As a necessary introduction I will first discuss the importance of flowers in

Victorian society and how, in parallel fashion to his re-rendering of ancient myths and

legends in his picture-writing, Crane recuperated the flower book, a popular form of

literature, for his socialist propaganda. Lauded by critics for the background landscapes 173 Crane, Queen Summer, 14-15.

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of his paintings and prints, Crane was able to transfer his exceptional skills in rendering

vegetation to the foreground of his work by making the flower and the garden his

subjects.174 For Crane, the flower book genre acted in a similar way to the fairy tale,

which I will discuss in Chapter Three. However, Crane did not create traditional flower

books and instead, chose to hybridize the concepts behind sentimental flower books.

Unlike botany texts, these books were less sexualized and more moralized engagements

with flowers and considered to be more appropriate for women readers. Sentimental

flower books placed emotional or religious significance on flowers, rather than the

educational or scientific importance that would more ‘properly’ appeal to men. With the

exception of the work of Beverly Seaton, this area of flower book production is

understudied in the discipline and would stand improvement, especially in how these

books relate to gendered understandings of society, education, and art.175 Sentimental

flower books, the language of flowers, and the narrative of fairy tales helped Crane to

create his own floral literature that could infuse the political thrust currently absent from

the traditional genres he borrowed.

Next, I will examine the histories of the lily and the rose in visual culture. These

flowers have been used continuously to express different artistic, political, religious, and

social agendas. The guilds of Renaissance Italy and Medieval England, about which

Crane had a romanticized view, became the ideal structure for Crane’s vision of a new

socialist art world. In this structure, decorative art would be placed on equal footing with

painting, sculpture, and architecture. Furthermore, the idea of grafting, which was briefly

174 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 4, 43-44, 120. 175 Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History, Victorian Literature and Culture Series, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), Towards a Historical Semiotics of Literary Flower Personification," Poetics Today (10, no. 4, 1989, 679-701), "Considering the Lilies: Ruskin's "Proserpina" and Other Victorian Flower Books."

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discussed in Chapter One in relation to Crane’s emblems, will be further examined to

demonstrate the artist’s interest in the political connotations of horticulture. This motif

was used by Crane to unite imagery and subject matter across the narratives of his books

and artistic practice. The tensions between fine art and craft, reconciled in Crane’s

utopian garden, will be explored further in Chapter Three, in which “happily-ever-after”

narratives of fairy tales are discussed in relation to what Crane hoped would be the

inevitability of socialism.

Part I: Flowers and Ideology

As Stephen Buchmann writes in the “Preface” to his 2015 The Reason for

Flowers: “Flowers represent our past along with our hope for a bright future,” a

sentiment that defines the use of flowers in art and literature during the Victorian era.176

As the nineteenth century dawned, the study of botany, which focused on the science and

cultivation of plants, was still a popular pastime in England.177 This preoccupation with

documenting plants began in the eighteenth century, stimulated in part by the specimens

brought home from Captain Cook’s voyages. Characterized by the urge to find and

classify plants, these activities resulted in the genre of illustrated botanical texts,

exemplified by Henry Phillip’s Flora Historica (1824). However, as the century

proceeded these science-focused books were superseded by literature that combined

smaller parts of botanical knowledge with pieces of horticultural-focused lore and legend,

176 Stephen L. Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives, First Scribner Hardcover ed. (New York: Scribner, 2015) “Preface,” ix. 177 Debra N. Mancoff, Flora Symbolica: Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art, (Munich : London: Prestel, 2003), 7.

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such as Anna Pratt’s Flowers and Their Associations (1840).178 This genre of books was

even further developed after the middle of the century when the language of flowers and

florigraphy, the process of studying and encoding messages through the colour and

placement of blooms in arrangements, became a popular pastime, ushering in the era of

emotional, or sentimental, flowers.179

First arriving in the 1820’s from the continent with the translated version of the

Parisian book Le Langage des Fleurs (1819), by Madame Charlotte de Latour, the

language of flowers did not initially have a high level of popularity in Britain.180 This

may be due to the precedence of sexualized terms relating to botany, so the language of

flowers was treated with a degree of caution upon its arrival.181 However, with the

assistance of George Routledge (1812-1888), who published attractive books targeted for

the gift market, they became a staple in English literature.182

This shift in emphasis, from science and exploration, to entertainment and

aesthetics coincided with the era of romantic flowers, understood to be devoid of

scientific interest and, instead, filled with emotional attachment and meaning. These

flowers began to make appearances in British art and literary markets.183 Flower poetry,

an example of which is J. J. Grandville’s (1803-47) Les Fleurs Animees (1847), flower

178 Mancoff, Flora Symbolica: Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art, 7. 179 Mancoff, Flora Symbolica: Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art, 7. 180 Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers, 210. 181 Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History. 80. Same George, Botany, Sexuality, and Women's Writing 1760-1830: From Modest Shoot to Forward Plant, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) 105. Beth Fowkes Tobin, "Imperial Designs: Botanical Illustration and the British Botanic Empire," In Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-century British Painting, 174-201 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999) 179. Fowkes Tobins discusses the Linnaeus classification system and its importance to the British explorers in the eighteenth century. 182 Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History, 80-81. Mostly in the form of gift books, the genre of flower books took a decided turn away from the illustrated botanical texts that preceded them, focusing on moral and religious content instead of scientific content. Routledge published Kate Greenaway’s The Language of Flowers in 1884, and it has remained as one of the most recognizable and republished piece of florigraphy to this day. 183 Martin Rix, and Kew Gardens, Golden Age of Botanical Art, (London: Andre Deutsch, 2012), 11.

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folklore, like Reverend Hilderic Friend (1852-1940) Flowers and Flower Lore (1884),

the language of flowers, as in The Sentiment of Flowers; of, Language of Flora (1836) by

Robert Tyas (1811-1879), along with moral and religious flower works, such as Reverend

Hugh Macmillan’s (1833-1903) Bible Teachings in Nature (1867), flooded the market,

and the sentimental considerations of flowers became just as important as the scientific

approach to flowers.184

Concerned with treating flora through an emotional lens, rather than the botanical

and horticultural terms of the earlier century, sentimental flower books such as John

Stevens Henslow’s, Le Bouquet des Souvenirs; A Wreath of Friendship (1840), John

Kitto’s (1804-1854) Thoughts Among Flowers (1843) and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s

(1790-1846) Chapters on Flowers (1848) all use various forms of anthropomorphized

flowers to illustrate emotional and religious situations. These forms of nineteenth century

florilegia, an anthology of floral related subjects, recalled the prose of the Ancient Greco-

Roman myths and epic poems, in which floral imagery was used to personify natural

occurrences and flowers were used as the earthly touchstones between the pantheon of

gods and humanity. It is this tradition of sentimental flowers that captured the interests

the Pre-Raphaelite painters, like Burne-Jones and John Everett Millais (1829-1896),

exemplified by their works The Legend of Briar Rose (1885-1890) and Ophelia (1852)

(fig. 33-34) and would eventually engross Crane as well.

The popularity of floral subjects in books was supported by the growing interest

and access to flowers by classes outside of Britain’s elite. With access to pleasure

gardens, illustrated seed catalogues, the ability to buy and grow plants in your own home,

and the design of plant furniture for domestic interiors, access to cut flowers for 184 Seaton, "Considering the Lilies: Ruskin's "Proserpina" and Other Victorian Flower Books", 256-58.

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decoration, and the increase of rose breeding competitions, the farming and middle

classes rose to prominence in the floral world.185 The act of rose breeding during this time

became something akin to craft; a pursuit that involved technique and attention to detail,

with a focus on line, shape, and colour—the formal qualities that interested members of

the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements.

The Victorian middle-class had a profound interest in flowers. They were a driving

force behind the development of the horticultural press, which might include magazines,

farming guides, seed catalogues, and breeding guides. These publications featured a wide

range of coloured images. One example is a collection of advertisements for vegetable

seeds and fertilizer, which depict smartly attired vegetables, who appear to be delighted

at the prospect of being planted (fig. 35).186 The middle class soon became the primary

audience of such products, as they were for nature-focused periodicals.187 One argument

for why they were so invested in this material is that owning plants mimicked the

property owning and working that historically could only be pursued by the

aristocracy.188 But there are other reasons for their interest. Walter Crane believed that

garden cultivation allowed an expressive freedom, equivalent to other artistic mediums.

As Crane writes in his essay Art and Labour (1892) “the labourer is engaged in moving

say, earth or minerals from one place to another with his shovel. The painter is engaged 185 Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History, 8-9. 186 The connection between the different classes with fruits and vegetables was a common one during the Victorian era. Trading cards depicting the different classes as various produce were printed and vegetal fantasies, theatrical plays based around flowers, fruits, and vegetables often touched on class conflicts in their narratives. Babil and Bijou, a play by Dionysius Boucicault, depicts the revolt of common garden fruits and vegetables against the Court of Flowers and their insect allies. Michael Booth, Victorian Spectacular Theatre, 1850-1910 (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 78. This topic is also discussed by Alison Syme, in A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art, (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 37-38. 187 Seaton, "Considering the Lilies: Ruskin's "Proserpina" and Other Victorian Flower Books", 256. 188 For a discussion on landscape tradition and middle station art consumption see Carol Gibson-Wood "Picture Consumption in London at the End of the Seventeenth Century," The Art Bulletin (84, no. 3, 2002), 491-500.

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in moving earth or minerals (in the form of colours) from one place to another – from his

palette to his canvas with his brush.”189 Gardening provided an action that collapsed the

barriers between artistic and physical labour, allowing the middle-class citizen to

participate in the aesthetic discourse of the garden. Furthermore, the middle-class led the

way in rose breeding during the mid- to late-nineteenth century.190 As such, they became

the prime target for publishers, a prime example being the cover for a seed catalogue

from 1896, which compares the jobs of the gardener and painter, with the different

coloured petals of roses placed on a palette as if they were blobs of paint ready to add

pigment to the garden (fig. 36).

From the late nineteenth century to the early 1960’s, a generation of

author/illustrators in the field of children’s literature depicted wildflowers as

anthropomorphized flower people and fairies.191 Championed by Crane, these humanized

garden characters were originally inspired by the increasing inclusion of flowers in

English fairy tales, as they were translated from earlier French and German authors, and

were later included in original narratives created by Crane and his colleagues.192 Crane’s

tales, which were more distinctly political in their narratives than most, grew from

practices in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when fables were used for social

and political satire, before they became a genre associated most strongly with children's

moral education.193 These fables and their contents would become important tools for

189 Crane, “Art and Labour,” in Claims of Decorative Art, 50-61 (p. 51). The connection between artist and labourer is also discussed in O’Neill, "Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics." 190 Potter, The Rose: A True History, 363, Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History, 7. 191 Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers, 232. 192 Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers, 231. 193 Beverly Seaton, “Towards a Historical Semiotics of Literary Flower Personification,” 692. Fables did not disappear from social or political commentary or satire, however with the improvements to printing

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socialist activists as they searched for venues for propaganda that would reach a wider

range of citizens.

As discussed in Chapter One, socialist parties throughout the 1880’s and 1890’s

became increasingly popular with the middle-class as the political groups fought for the

rights of labourers.194 In a conversation about art and socialism, Crane discussed his

views on the relationship between the two, using flowers as his prime metaphor: “I love

the splendid gorgeous orchid, but I am even more attracted by the simple charm of the

flowers of the field.”195 According to Konody, the orchid represents the art produced and

promoted by a market based on despotism and luxury, while field flowers represent

an art more simple, more easily accessible to the masses, an art the appreciation of

which does not require any special degree of culture, but which appeals to the

child and to the grown-up person with equal power.”196

While the rose and the lily were not field flowers they, nevertheless, became flowers

claimed by the people during the mid-to-late nineteenth century as the visual culture of

flora expanded throughout the classes.197

Though traditional fairy tales and fables were immensely popular tools for

conveying social and cultural issues, floral fables became one of the primary ways to

express concerns to women and children, due to the perceived affinity that they had with

flora.198 Fleeting beauty and youth, capacity for procreation, and delicacy in temperament

processes, coupled with an increase in quality children’s books, fables made a shift to the genre of children’s literature. 194 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 1-17. 195 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 5. 196 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 5. 197 Alison Syme discusses the way in which flowers permeated all levels of Victorian society in her book A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art. 198 Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History, 53-57. Popular titles were Fables of Flora by John Langhorne (1771) and Fables of Flowers for the Female Sex by John Huddleston Wynne (1773).

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were equated to the condition of flowers. This tradition in Victorian visual culture may

have its roots in seventeenth-century anatomical engravings of the female womb, which

depicted the uterus as a blossoming flower and revealing the baby within. One of the best

examples is Odoardo Fialetti’s engraving known as Petal Venus from 1631 (fig. 37).

Evolving from multiple traditions, nineteenth-century floral fables attribute human

qualities such as faithfulness or greed, to plants in order to provide lessons; but, like the

abridged botanicals for women, the educational lessons in these children’s books had

little scientific significance and focused, instead, on moral lessons or basic education like

learning the alphabet.199 Crane, always concerned with education, would have been

intrigued by this form of literature as a form of expression and as Crane grew up during

the peak of this phenomenon, it is possible he would have remembered these books later

in his career and recognized their potential for political intervention.

This line of inquiry into flower books has revealed two deficits in current critical

literature; the first being the lack of research into the publication and dissemination of

sentimental flower books, and the second being the absence of a study on Routledge’s

contribution to the revolution of Victorian book publishing.200 While this thesis cannot

adequately explore these topics, their exploration would provide a better understanding of

the steady increase in popularity of flowers and floral paraphernalia across classes

throughout the middle of the nineteenth century. Research in these areas would also shed

light on how Crane, along with Greenaway and Cicely Mary Barker (1895-1973) after 199 Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History, 53-60. 200 Routledge was responsible for revolutionizing flower books, fairy tales, and illustrated children’s literature during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The publishing house was responsible for the collaboration between Edmund Evans and Crane, which resulted in the Toy Book series that launched Crane’s career. Along with Crane, Routledge was also responsible for publishing the works of Caldecott and Greenaway in the following decades to Crane’s initial success, cementing the triumvirate’s place in the history of the nursery. The influence of Routledge on the book culture of Victorian Britain is a study that this thesis does not have room to explore adequately, but one that needs more attention.

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him, were able to use the flower genre to great success. Crane used the flower book genre

to carry a message, as he had done with fairy tales. Like the enthusiasm for landscape

painting and prints by the middling sort in the prior century, cultural importance of the

flower books to the Victorian middle-class can be detected by their very popularity.

Precisely why they were so popular has yet to be determined, but I suspect that flower

books allowed for an illusion of mastery over land within the constraints of an urban

environment while also engaging with an emerging preoccupation with emotionality.

Floral fables offered an opportunity to represent native British flowers as conduits

for moral tales, creating deeper national attachment to the stories' plots.201 The

importance of narrative to Crane, and the socialist movement in its entirety, will be

discussed in greater detail in a the next chapter, but it is important to note here that the

difference in narrative in Crane’s flower books and his toy books was not missed by

critics of the time. Konody writes about the three “floral processions” produced by Crane,

and states that when it comes to Crane’s children’s books, these have to be treated

separately from the rest because their subject matter and style do not match his other

books.202 However, as I have discussed in the previous chapter, the intermediality of

Crane’s work allows for the comparison of the entirety of the artists’ oeuvre, as Crane

treated all mediums as equals; a message that is important in understanding the

underlying plot of Queen Summer.

201 Landscapes and land in general were always important to the British identity, and Crane was using this accepted genre to his advantage by combining the love of land with the love of stories in his flower books. 202 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 32-34. When Konody was writing his biography on Crane in 1901, Crane had only produced three of his five flower books. It would have been interesting to see what Konody had to say of Crane’s later flower books, which contain a much stronger socialist connection in their imagery than his earlier ones do, as Konody’s writing does not favour Crane’s mixing of the artistic and the political.

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The popularity of Crane’s children’s books with adults and children would have

offered him the opportunity to express more politically charged issues in his illustrations.

Since the subject of personified flowers had been so popular in literature for women and

children in the previous decades, it would make sense for Crane, who was always

concerned with adding to his collection of symbols, to adopt flowers into his own

iconography.

Part II: Flowers for all

Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed, And in my standard bear the arms of York, To grapple with the house of Lancaster; And force perforce I’ll make him yield the crown, Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.203

Duke of York The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster

William Shakespeare (1591)

The War of the Roses (1455-1485) was fought between the houses of Lancaster

and the York, two branches of the Plantagenet family, over the throne of England. Floral

standards were used by each house—white roses for the House of York and red roses for

the House of –Lancaster—and renditions of the conflict were popular in both art and

literature. Shakespeare seized the metaphor of feuding flowers for two of his plays, The

First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (1591)

and The First Part of Henry the Sixth (1592), in order to foreshadow later conflicts in the

plot. The use of roses as representatives of political conflict in England in Shakespeare’s

203 William Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr, “The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (2 Henry VI)” in The Norton Shakespeare Histories, (2nd ed.; W. W. Norton, New York, NY, 2008), 1.1.253-260, p135.

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work is most prominent in 1 Henry VI Act Two Scene Four, where the playwright

constructed an entire scene around members and comrades of the York and Lancaster

families antagonizing each other by picking the roses of the opposing faction from their

bushes.204 The aggressive action of plucking the roses from the hedgerows acts as a

catalyst for the start of the war.205

There is a long history of constructing flowers to fit a particular need, and the

political re-modeling and repurposing of flowers has been a common practice by many

royal and religious institutions.206 In England the Tudor Rose is the benchmark example

when discussing the creation of a political and heraldic symbol. Created after the War of

the Roses, the Tudor Rose combined the roses of the House of York, with the House of

Lancaster (fig. 38).207 By placing the white rose of York, inside the red rose of Lancaster,

Henry VII stabilized his claim to the English throne, and the newly grafted Tudor rose,

deployed repeatedly in royal propaganda, became a permanent political image that would

204 Shakespeare and Greenblatt, “The First Part of Henry the Sixth,” in The Norton Shakespeare Histories, 2.4, p 318-321. 205 The garden has occupied a significant position in English history as a tool for representing and critiquing the British Empire and homeland, and theft from a garden is a common narrative trope in both English art and literature. While the use of stealing plants from a garden as a plot device deserves more attention then this thesis can allow, its presence in fairy tales as an instigating action of conflict is of particular interest. A prime example is in Rapunzel when the cobbler steals radishes from the witches garden and in retribution for the theft the cobbler forfeits the life of his unborn daughter to the witch’s care; Jakob and Whilhelm Grimm, Grimm's Complete Fairy Tale, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, (New York: Barnes & Noble Inc. 2009) 88. 206 The construction of flowers is discussed by Jack Goody, The Culture of Flowers, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), see also Potter, The Rose: A True History, for an in depth discussion on the history of the rose and how its’ popularity and meaning has fluctuated over time. 207 Ernst Lehner and Johanna Lehner, Johanna. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees, (New York: Tudor Publishing. 1960), 79. While neither side actually fought under the emblem of either rose during the war, the Lancastrian family that Henry VII was from did have a red rose as one of their heraldic signs. While the York’s did have a white rose in their heraldic repertoire, it was only indirectly connected to them. However the white boar was the York’s primary heraldic sign, which with some assistance from strategic propaganda work, could be connected to the white rose and assist in making the flower a proper emblem of the York house.

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overshadow all other roses in the British Isles.208 While the English were cultivating their

royal rose, the French had claimed their own imperial bloom with the fleur-de-lis.209

Much like the royal champions of the past, Crane would construct his own political

blooms that merged past, present, and future into a cohesive political message for the

socialist movement, exemplified in Queen Summer.

The path to an ideal future is expressed in Queen Summer through a collision of

flowers. These flowers represent two different past societies: the first is the Elizabethan

past of the rose knights, when the English Queen was a powerful patron of the arts and

used art for her own political purposes. In the second, the lily knights represent the

idealized past of the Renaissance and the Florentines, who re-created art. Combined,

these flowers epitomized the ways in which Crane wanted the socialists to associate with

art in modern society.210 Using the lily’s connections with Renaissance Florence and the

rose’s association with Medieval England, Crane was able to represent the conflict

between fine art and craft in Britain. Implicated in this discussion are the historical and

religious connotations found within the language of flowers.

From the beginnings of floral narratives, the lily was understood to be “the milk

and blood of ancient myth and legend [and conveyed] passion and fecundity in tales of

life and death.”211 Believed to have been introduced to Britain by Roman soldiers, who

stewed and ate the bulbs for medicinal purposes, the vivid whiteness of the lily, which

came to be known as the Madonna lily, eventually became the symbol of the Virgin Mary

208 Jennifer Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, (London: Atlantic Books, 2013), 155. Queen Elizabeth I in many of her portraits also used this political rose, however the Virgin Queen also appropriated a different rose into her personal symbolic repertoire, the Eglantine or sweet brier. 209 Margaret Willes, Pick of the Bunch : The Story of Twelve Treasured Flowers, (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2009) 57. 210 Potter, Seven Flowers and how they Shaped Our World, 156. 211 Marcia Reiss, Lily, (London: Reaktion Books, 2013) 11.

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throughout Christendom.212 Used in early Christian mosaics and frescos, the symbolic

connection between the lily and the Virgin increased in the Middle Ages, and it became a

feature of Annunciation scenes, often placed in the hands of archangel Gabriel, or in the

hands of Mary, herself.213 The lily took on other symbolic meanings as the iconography

of the Christian faith grew and expanded; most notably, the miracle of Christ’s

resurrection.214

This association with resurrection and “surmounting earthly effects,” or the

overcoming the naturally sinful condition of humanity, is important to remember when

considering the lilies represented in Queen Summer.215 The female figures are often

shown in costumes that recall nun’s habits and in the book they perform acts of charity

that restore characters who have succumbed to their enemies. For example, on page

thirty-five, two maiden lilies administer medicine, from the restorative lily bloom, to a

fallen rose knight. The crossed swords in the foreground, furthermore, reference Christ’s

sacrifice, but also suggest his resurrection (fig. 31). Resurrection is also a key component

of the rose iconography in Queen Summer.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the rose had taken over the lily in popularity

in religious iconography, and had itself become a prominent symbol of Christ’s

resurrection.216 Although it is not clear why this change occurred, the rose was widely

admired in antiquity. For example, the Romans used roses as representations of the

212 Willes, Pick of the Bunch, 20, and Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, 35, Reiss. Lily, 127. 213 Marina Heilmeyer, The Language of Flowers: Symbols and Myths, (Munich: New York: Prestel, 2001), 50, and Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, 47. 214 Lehner, Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers Plants and Trees, 33. 215 Heilmeyer, The Language of Flowers, 50. 216 Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers, 115, 241-242.

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deities of love.217 Woven into garlands, placed in elaborate arrangements, painted onto

ceilings, or the petals strewn across every available surface, the rose, with its luscious

scent and vibrant colour, became a staple decoration of the Roman elite.218 Religious

groups initially scorned the rose, which had become synonymous with extravagance and

decadence during the Roman empire.219 It was not until the eighth century that the rose,

along with other flowers, began to regain its importance in Christian lands after

Charlemagne (c. 747-814). During the Crusades, Charlemagne witnessed the beauty of

the gardens in Moorish Spain and began a tradition of planting roses in monasteries

across his empire, both for their medicinal and aesthetic values.220

After it was stripped of its pagan significance, the rose, along with the lily and the

iris, became the flowers of the Virgin Mary, and appeared in illuminated manuscripts,

paintings, mosaics and stained glass.221 They became fixed in religious iconography from

the Middle Ages onwards. As the flowers of resurrection they would have been intriguing

to Crane, who used religious icons in his work to great effect despite the fact that was not

a religious man. Crane believed that the two best periods in artistic production were the

Renaissance, during which there were considerable numbers of commissions for public

paintings, and Medieval England, when there was a strong emphasis on craft.222 Both of

217 Potter, Seven Flowers and How they Shaped our World, 135. 218 Goody, The Culture of Flowers, 73-96. The first part of chapter three, “The Decline of Flower Culture in Europe” in Goody’s The Culture of Flowers, discusses the different type of flower paraphernalia that the Roman’s used and how it changed after the fall of the empire in regards to Christian and Catholic religious practices. 219 Goody, The Culture of Flowers, 89. 220 Buchmann, The Reason for Flowers, 241, and Wiles, Pick of the Bunch, 129. 221 Diana Wells, 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names, (1st ed. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1997), 187, and Buchmann, The Reason For Flowers, 242-242. 222 Crane, Line and Form, 194; Crane, The Bases of Design, 34-36 and 362-363, he discusses the fraternity of the guilds, along with the difference in industrial and manual productions of art objects; Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New, 125-126, discusses the beauty and success of Renaissance books and designers.

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these time periods had extensive guild systems that benefited artist and art production and

these eras are what Crane wanted to resurrect in his own time.

In Queen Summer, an important part of Crane’s lily faction is their symbol, a

fleur-de-lis emblazoned on their armour, horses, and weapons. However, the iconography

of the fleur-de-lis has a muddled history. Commonly understood to be a stylized lily, the

fleur-de-lis actually derives from an iris, which was named after the Greco-Roman

goddess, who acted as a messenger for the gods.223 It was a political symbol and has been

traced to the Frankish conqueror, Clovis I (c. 466-511), who appropriated the fleur-de-lis

during his fifth-century campaign against the Visigoths.224 The pointed leaves and petals

that some varieties of irises feature, have been used in association with military activity

as the shape recalls knives and swords. Known as “Schwertlilie” in German, which

translates to sword lily, the military connotation of the iris can be traced as far back as

Ancient Greece and came to prominence as a heraldic ornament under the Frankish

Kingdom.225 The iris is known throughout flower folklore as a symbol of power, taking

its place in depictions of rulers, on the sceptres of kings, and even being placed upon the

brow of the Egyptian sphinx.226 Like the lily and the rose, the iris evolved into a potent

religious symbol during the Middle Ages, when it would become associated with the

Annunciation, and the Virgin Mary more generally.227 This connection between the lily

and the iris through the fleur-de-lis is one that is well documented. Crane would have

been aware of this iconographical history from his travels in Florence in 1890-91, the

223 Elisabeth De. Feydeau, and Catherine Pegard, From Marie Antoinette's Garden : An Eighteenth-century Horticultural Notebook (English Language ed. Paris: Flammarion, 2013), 150, and Willes, Pick of the Bunch, 57-59. 224 Heilmeyer, The Language of Flowers, 34, and Wiles, Pick of the Bunch, 57. 225 Heilmeyer, The Language of Flowers, 34. 226 Lehner, Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees, 64. 227 Willes, Pick of the Bunch, 57.

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year before Queen Summer was released.228 Crane may have even begun illustrating

Queen Summer on this trip, as he had in the past sent works home to London while

abroad. The best example of this is when he was working on Mother Hubbard with

Edmund Evans and, while on his honeymoon in Italy, sent drawings back to England to

be printed.229 However, the iris would not lose the masculine connotation that it had

gained in the hands of the Franks, and later the monarchs of France, and the fleur-de-lis’

feminine (Virgin Mary) and this gender versatility would become vital to Crane’s floral

iconography in Queen Summer.

Yet, the iris was also adopted by another prominent civilization, not to signify

victory and conquest, but to emphasize faith, authority, and resurrection.230 The

Florentine Lily, which is also (vexingly) based, not on lilies, but on the irises that grow

around the city, has been a recognizable symbol of Florence since around the eleventh or

twelfth century after the cities knights’ participation in the first Crusade.231 This version

of the fleur-de-lis is slightly different in form than the one used by the Bourbon

monarchy. Although the shape is similar, the Florentine lily has two additional stamens

protruding from the petals. It is this version of the fleur-de-lis that can be seen

emblazoned on a banner, which hangs over the Queen of Summer’s throne (fig. 39).

On first glance, and based on the iconographical traditions of Britain and France,

one could argue that Queen Summer’s plot recalls the long-standing conflict between

228 Crane, Reminiscences, 351-352. 229 Crane, Reminiscences, 148. 230 Heilmeyer, The Language of Flowers, 34. 231 "Florence Symbol – the Truth on the Red Lily." Your Contact in Florence. February 6, 2015. http://yourcontactinflorence.com/florence-symbol-truth-red-lily/; Bonacini, Silvia. "The Florentine Iris, History of a Symbol." Florence with Guide. 2015. Accessed August 22, 2016. http://www.florencewithguide.com/blog/the-florentine-iris/. Retrieved 22 August 2016. Originally a white lily on a red background, the colours were flipped when the Guelph’s defeated the Ghibellines in the thirteenth century

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these countries. However, in deploying the Florentine lily, Crane makes a significant

departure, which takes us out of the past and into the future. I argue that Crane deployed

the symbol of the city of Florence because of the city’s association with the birth of the

Renaissance. Crane believed that socialism would stimulate a renaissance in British art

and culture.232 This connection between the fleur-de-lis and the city of Florence would

have been vitally important to Crane in his explorations of the place of art in socialism.

The artist further underscores this message by having Queen Summer holding a

peacock fan (fig. 40). The peacock, both the bird and its tail feathers, became a symbol of

the Aesthetic movement, in which Crane was heavily involved. However, in early

Christian traditions the peacock also symbolizes eternal life and resurrection; which, as

discussed, was also expressed by both the lily and the rose at varying points in their

histories.233 In fact, Crane was known to have used the symbol of the peacock to

reference resurrection in quite a few of his works, including his multiple treatments of

Sleeping Beauty (fig. 41, 42, 43-a, 43-b), which he understood to be the ideal fairy tale to

express the awakening of art through socialism.234 Crane’s connection between a utopian

vision of a future socialist Britain and a romanticized image of Renaissance Florence is

expressed through the language of flowers.

While the lily was the embodiment of high art of the Renaissance in Queen

Summer, the rose was the epitome of Medieval England craft and design. The rose had

manifold meanings in art at the close of the nineteenth century, when the debate between

natural and hybrid blooms was at the forefront of many horticulturists’ minds. The

232 Reiss, Lily, 120. 233 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics,1875-1890, 156. 234 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 156-160.

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Victorians were in the midst of “rose mania” during most of Walter Crane’s career.235

During the mid- to late-nineteenth century, rose breeding and cultivation had reached

new heights with the introduction of many new foreign breeds of roses into Britain. The

flower that stood as the symbol of England was undergoing a transformation of identity

and ownership, with all class levels involved in the increasing need to own the latest

breeds of rose.236

In the last decades of the century, rose parties and exhibitions became frequent

social functions, featuring breeders who were interested in perfecting the rose and

bringing more spectacular varieties to the British public.237 They crossbred old and new

varieties of roses and created hybrids that glorified the beauty of the flower. In

consequence to this desire to improve upon nature, the British populace began to

overlook the beauty of the hardy, native blooms that acted as the support for their

experiments. By the end of the nineteenth century there were more than 3,000 new

varieties of roses, while native varieties became relatively scarce.238 Crane pre-empted

the resurgence in the first decade of the twentieth century of what could be called the

renaissance of the natural varieties, when gardeners began searching in graveyards and

isolated locales for the lost “old roses.”239

The wild roses found in Britain hardly resemble the carefully constructed beauties

popular in flower exhibitions of the Victorian era. Small in size, consisting of five petals

on average, with colours ranging from white to pink, the most common wild rose breed in

235 Potter, The Rose: A True History, 363. 236 Potter, The Rose: A True History, 363. 237 Potter, Seven Flowers, and How They Shaped Our World, 140-141. 238 Wiles, Pick of the Bunch, 136. According to Wiles, the amount of natural rose varieties dropped from 292 different types to 51 between 1840-1865. 239 Wiles, Pick of the Bunch, 138-139.

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Britain is the dog rose (fig. 44).240 Both native blooms have exposed stamens and pistils

that range from yellow to gold in colour, and are climbing plants that have small hooked

thorns on their vines. While not as ostentatious as the roses of the Rosa Gallica family,

the dog rose, in particular, had a very important part to play in the Victorian rose rush (fig.

45).

The dog rose was used extensively for grafting in the nineteenth century due to its

hardiness and vigour. Grafting is a horticultural process that involves transplanting a

more delicate blossom or plant (scion) onto a resilient root plant (stock) that will support

the more delicate component, and allow the new hybrid plant to thrive (fig. 46).241 This

process is mimicked in Crane’s rendition of the rose throughout Queen Summer, where

the knights, ladies, and background roses are all composites of different roses circulating

in England at this time. The grafting process is an ideal metaphor for Crane’s ideas about

a socialist future: he wanted to improve Britain, and British art, by introducing morals

and examples from past ideal societies into modern culture so that both would grow and

intertwine, becoming stronger together over time. Therefore, the depiction of a wild

English rose would have been associated with Britain's past, while the new blossom

could serve as a representation of an impending change. Similarly the revolutionists can

be seen as a way to lift a society from a stagnant past and keep them progressing towards

the future.

The importance of this connection to a native English rose rather than a newly

bred variety is connected to the growing history of the plant. The rose has a remarkable

240 Caroline Arscott, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings, (New Haven [Conn.: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2008), 117; Wiles, Pick of the Bunch, 130. 241 Arscott, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings, 117.

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ability to grow in hostile areas, and the tenacity of this species has enabled it to survive

for thousands of years.242 However, it is the natural wild versions of these flowers that are

best-suited to survival in the northern hemisphere, not the types that are created in

greenhouses, and whose survival in Victorian England, relied on being successfully

grafted onto more resilient versions of its species. This ability to cling to life and adapt

would have been immensely intriguing to Crane as a socialist, whose own political views

were facing pressure form the English society in which they were trying to take root and

grow. By connecting his main rose figure with that of a common English plant, which

thrived throughout the centuries, I argue that he is seizing the metaphor of grafting to

argue that that socialism will also flourish in the English political and social landscapes,

once it has the chance to take root.

At the point of the narrative when the legions of lilies and roses clash, the dog

rose is featured predominately (fig. 47). The roses progress from pale pink, almost white,

in colour to darker pinks and reds as they advance toward the point of impact with the lily

legion. The lead rose knight, who is portrayed closest to the reader, is situated on a black

horse decorated with flowers that resemble the dog rose and the sweet brier, the variation

of the flower that represented Queen Elizabeth I.243 The knight is much darker in colour

than the rose knights that surround and precede him in the story, and his armour has

changed, showing a more layered, decorative quality that is similar to the new breeds of

flowers being bred in England at this time. The rose affixed to his hip has even begun to

transform. In previous iterations, it was a simple, stylized version of the dog rose in form

if not in colour, but at this point in the story, it has taken on more elaborate form (fig. 48).

242 Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, 134. 243 Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, 156.

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Meanwhile, in this confrontation, the lead lily knight brandishes a shield emblazoned

with the Florentine lily, his white steed decorated in flowing fleur-de-lis, with the rest of

the knights attired in a similar manner (fig. 49).

This particular scene, and these particular knights, show the qualities that

socialists were attempting to provide to the greater Victorian public; a view of an

idealized or constructed past in order to comment on the present.244 However, in his

attempt to incorporate nature and the fairy tale into his social commentary, Crane takes

this juxtaposition of idyllic past and tumultuous present and adds another dimension; the

prospect of an ideal future. O’Neill best describes this goal in Crane’s works when she

states:

Crane [subverts] the meanings of [the figures] traditional mythological attributes

and [claims] them for his own ends…the images [by] Crane however offer

something else: a regeneration of the fragile and false divides between…an

idealized past and an ideal future. They represent Terry Eagleton’s ‘twilight

between two worlds’ a third space that expresses both rupture and continuity

between the present and the future245

Crane depicts this moment of rupture and continuity through floral symbolism in the

clash of the lily and the rose knights. This moment of a potential collision occurs twice in

the book: first with the initial joust of the lily and rose champions, and then again when

the legions of lily and rose knights retaliate to defend their fallen leaders (fig. 50 and fig.

47). Both of these conflicts encompass two pages, the images bleeding across the margins

of the folio. Crane depicts the two opposing forces seconds from colliding with each

244 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 17, and Hilliard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 121. 245 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 17.

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other, the weapons mere inches from making contact, and one even jumps across the

spine of the book into its opponent’s pictorial realm. This action then collapses the

barriers separating the idyllic past and future through a present physical action, and

makes the realization of this future possible.246

This is where other scholars leave this confrontation. The next layer of analysis

that I offer is the inclusion of the tension between craft and fine art. While the actual

collision is never shown, there is a suggestion that the rose factions were the aggressors,

crossing the centre part of the book and forcing their way into the realm of the lilies. This

is reflective of Crane’s own beliefs and writings on the subject of the importance of craft

to British art. In Crane’s The Claims of Decorative Art, he wrote at length about the

cooperation and unity of art and craft in the past and laments the damage that commercial

pressure has done in separating craftsmen from their work and from each other.247 This is

further underlined by his grandson’s eulogizing speeches about his grandfather’s

frustration with being excluded from high art institutions. But roses are ubiquitous in

Crane’s “craft” objects, including the Briar Rose cabinet from 1907 and his Sleeping

Beauty wallpapers, along with his book projects. Significantly, roses are also shown

similarly infiltrating his high art painting, like The Fate of Persephone, in which the

figure of capitalism is pictured abducting Persephone, who is here deployed as a

246 This idea of a socialist future seen through an action is explored in many of Crane’s other work, particularly that of his Briar Rose cabinet from 1905, which involves the viewer having to physically open the cabinet doors in order to see the results of socialism in this imagined scene. This is most likely why Crane created his socialist messages in book or pamphlet form, as it required the physical action of the viewer or reader, which mimics the physical action of social change being carried out by socialist activists. 247 Crane, “Art and Handicraft” in The Claims of Decorative Art, 62-73.

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representative of high art.248 When fine art is stolen by Hades (capitalism), what remains

will be the wild roses and the “flowers of the field.”

The aftermath of this scene in Queen Summer has the two flower-men entwined in

the struggle for victory (fig. 21). It is here that Crane brings in the religious symbolism

connected with both the lily and the rose. The two knights struggle, wrapped around their

fallen, crossed weapons, unable to disengage without the cooperation of their

opponent.249 It is only after the Queen, the emblem of socialism, has risen and actively

entered the field of battle that the two flowers are able to overcome their differences and

rise together to create an utopian world.250 Crane visualizes this world throughout the

next section of his book, with men and women working together, and the painter and the

poet both finding joy and inspiration in this new society.

As has been argued by O’Neill and others, Crane used allegory as a tool for

expressing his political opinions throughout his works, and tended to focus on the human

figure as his main subject. The human figure as allegorical agent was seized upon

because, as O’Neill states, “the natural tendency of the human mind…gives figurative art

its importance.”251 Like the urge in the sentimental flower books to use

anthropomorphized figures to make nature relatable, Crane uses the intense interest in the

human figure as a means for communication. This anthropomorphizing of the flowers

also connects Crane’s tale to the Victorian interests in fairies and natural history.

248 Stano, "Conscious and Unconscious Socialism in the Watercolours of Walter Crane and Thomas Matthews Rooke." 2-4. 249 This cross is recreated in a smaller form on a later page, which incorporates the assistance of the female lilies in restoring a rose knight. 250 Crane’s Queen Summer closely resembles his renditions of Britannia. The reference to any “Queen” in visual culture during the Victorian era would likely invoke the idea or image of Queen Victoria, and Crane used this to his advantage in his iconography. Rendering his female heroines in the guise of a successful and beloved English Queen allowed Crane to interlace radical and innovative political ideas with contemporary figures and events, much the same way he did with historical material. 251 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 158-159.

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However, what this chapter has revealed is that the decorative elements of his work are

also intensely rich with critique.

Crane began his career as a children’s book illustrator, and continued on as one

throughout his life.252 As one of the most successful illustrators of his time, Crane

understood what designs would appeal to his audience, as well as what subjects would

draw the public to his works. Due to his own success in the field, Crane was well aware

of how “in Victorian art fairies [merged] within the natural world…often [reflecting] the

Victorians' own dreams of better worlds” and used this to his advantage when designing

his socialist, and personal book works.253 In Victorian culture “fairies and fairy tales were

strongly connected to…nostalgia” an emotion that was “conjured up at the turn of the

century” for many Victorians, who looked backwards in time for inspiration, or as a

means to escape the impending turn of the century.254

The Victorians had an intriguing relationship with time, which was expressed

throughout their literary and artistic endeavours. While many social and political groups

were focused on looking forward to the beginning of a new century, the majority of

people were focused on the past, reminiscing about the mystical, and the medieval.255

Queen Summer is an important work of art that expresses Victorian anxieties surrounding

time—it presents an argument for a future that relies entirely on motifs, symbols, and,

most importantly, skills from the past. Fairy tales, which are considered in the next

chapter, become for Crane conduits for what Marx argued was the inevitability of

252 Spencer, Walter Crane, 76-100. 253 Talairach-Vielmas, Fairy Tales, Natural History, and Victorian Culture, 9. 254 Talairach-Vielmas, Fairy Tales, Natural History, and Victorian Culture, 1-6. 255 Margaret Deming, Wish-landscapes and Garden Cities: They myth of the garden in allegories of English reform 1880 to 1920, (Unpublished doctoral thesis. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 2001), 97. This concept of reminiscence and nostalgia is discussed at length through Deming’s work as she argues that the images of gardens found in nineteenth century visual culture were often based more on myth than reality.

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revolution. But, pragmatic to the last, Crane was convinced of a longer term socio-

political project and the quests, common in fairy tale narratives, were conducive to his

ideas about education and political evolution, as opposed to revolution.

The illustrations by Crane throughout Queen Summer are dependent on histories

and knowledge constructed hundreds of years before their creation. The lily and the rose

as floral symbols can be traced back centuries, and gained new meanings that were

carried across time and place and, ultimately, drawn on by Walter Crane in his rendition

of the flowers for the British socialist movement. By embedding the accolades of

socialism into the fantastic, Crane is providing an inviting yet comprehensible picture of

what socialism offers—a revival in British art and beauty that is accessible to, and

accepting of, all levels of society.

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Chapter Three: Constructed Pasts and Fantastical Futures: The importance of fairy-tale narratives to

Crane’s representation of a socialist utopia

Fairy tales, fables, myths, and legends were essential to the art of Walter Crane,

and their narratives provided the basis for some of his most successful works of art. This

success was noticed in Crane’s own lifetime, and according to Konody was partially due

to the fact that,

The whole world of [Crane’s] imagination is filled with chivalrous knights

in armour, heroes in quest of strife and adventure for the glory or

protection of virtuous dames, though in later life he invested such

representations with some unmistakable allegorical significance and gave

them some direct bearing on some question or other of the day.256

From the early Toy Books, which illustrated tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1805-

1875), Charles Perrault (1628-1703), and the Brothers Grimm (Jacob 1785–1863; and

Wilhelm 1786–1859), to his renditions of Greco-Roman myths in his paintings, and his

fascination with the tale of Sleeping Beauty, Crane relied heavily on his imagination to

make these narratives come to life in both his art and politics. However, as many of his

paintings were sold to dealers on the continent and lost over time, it is Crane’s

illustrations of fairy tales that have survived and cemented his name in art and literary

history.257 As discussed earlier, Crane’s reputation as an illustrator for the nursery has, at

times, lessened or overshadowed the impact of the political content contained in his art;

an oversight this thesis has begun to address. I argue that by viewing Crane’s fairy tales

256 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 18-19. 257 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 236. Ernst Seeger bought most of Crane’s paintings and brought them to Germany.

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in light of his intermedial treatment of socialism, we can recuperate the pragmatic

socialism championed by Crane.

In this chapter, I argue that narrative was an element of design used much like line,

form, and colour in Crane’s work. Narrative was the thread that stitched Crane’s art

together across his oeuvre. In order to demonstrate this I will first explore the fairy tale as

a genre and demonstrate why these narratives would appeal to Crane, and the socialist

movement, as sources for visual propaganda. In this first section, I will examine the quest

narrative—the journey of a hero to achieve his ‘happily-ever-after,’ and how these often-

arduous adventures lead to a change in fortune for the protagonist. Just as the

protagonists in many fairy tales face villains and surmount ominous obstacles to change

their fortunes, so Crane faced his own challenges to change capitalism and the Royal

Academy. Yet, Crane believed that, much like in a fairy tale, there would be a happy

ending and when the dragon of capitalism was destroyed, the evolution of a socialist

Britain would begin. This sentiment can be seen in many of Crane’s works, most notably

England’s Emblem (1895), in which the legend of St. George slaying the dragon, an

emblematic figure in England since the fifteenth century, is transformed into a socialist

tale of triumph (fig. 51).258 As such, the quest fairy tale became a visual and literary

device that could be appropriated by propagandists who wished to enact change in their

society.

Within this section, the concept of Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) theories of the

inevitability of revolution will be discussed as a parallel to the ‘happily-ever-after’ ending

258 Marc Morris, "Slaying Myths: St George and the Dragon," (History Today 59, no. 4, April 4, 2009) Accessed October 19, 2016. http://www.historytoday.com/marc-morris/slaying-myths-st-george-and-dragon.

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of a fairy tale.259 According to Marx, socialism would emerge when the workers, who

had been exploited by the upper classes, reclaimed their labour and began participating

more actively in society.260 Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was a theoretical economist,

who concentrated on praxeology, or the study of human choice and action, put it in

human terms when he stated, “socialism will come when the material conditions for its

appearance have matured in the womb of capitalist society.”261 Crane also believed that

through active participation, labourers would realize their place in society and join the

political movement. However, Crane departs from Marx in how utopia is envisioned. It

was Crane’s conviction that labourers would take their cues from the artists, who Crane

believed were best suited for relaying significant messages about society.262 This is why

Crane was not conflicted by the industrial methods he used in his work and actively

visualized an utopian society in print, in wallpaper as well as in paint. Through his

participation in rallies, his lectures on socialism and through his art, he presented a

garden, a metaphor for peace and harmony under socialism.

This garden is taken up in the next section, which I will examine in relation to

Sleeping Beauty, a fairy tale that captivated Crane for over thirty years. By probing

Crane’s treatments of this classic fairy tale, which he revisited several times over his

career, with one that the artist penned and pictured himself, the true effect of narrative as

political agent will be demonstrated. Quest narratives, Marxist theory, garden motifs and

the awakening of a slumbering entity, find their expression in Crane’s original 259 A full discussion of Marx’s theories and their impact on Crane and the British socialists is beyond the scope of this thesis, but I will touch on aspects of the German philosopher’s theories in relation to Crane’s socialist propaganda. 260 Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), note 8, p. 229. 261 Ludwig Von Mises, Theory and History, History and Historiography, (New York: Garland Pub., 1984), 81. 262 Crane, Reminiscences, 452; Crane, Bases of Design, 238.

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contribution to the tradition of the fairy tale—Queen Summer. In this final section, I will

show that the narrative of Queen Summer was driven by the desire for profound, socio-

political and artistic change.

Part I: Quest Narrative and Marx

Crane was fascinated by fairy tales; they provided him a scope for his imagination,

a venue for the fantastical that history painting (and the institutions that promoted history

painting) did not allow, and they were primed for allegorical significance. The transition

from an oral tradition into visual and written traditions, would have appealed to Crane’s

sense of history. They could circumvent reality and entertain, while simultaneously

acting as moralizing or didactic agents. The duality of education and entertainment,

paired with the malleability and versatility of the tales, has contributed to the longevity of

their popularity.263 Fairy tales have always been reworked to fit contemporary needs, and

artists and authors have demonstrated a tendency to repurpose fairy-tale themes, learned

in their own childhoods, in order to elucidate personal and public issues. This

reprocessing of issues through a fantastical lens is particularly apparent in artistic and

literary works of the Victorian era, when the obsession with fairies and fairy tales led to a

vast consumer market for these products.264

At mid-century, there was a marked increase in interest in the fairy tale genre by

poets and authors. For example, The Eve of Saint Agnes (1819) by John Keats (1795-

1821), and Alfred Tennyson’s (1809-1892) Day Dream (1842), a reworking of an 1830

poem, are two of the most popular English renditions of the tale of Sleeping Beauty, with

263 Dawn Heerspink, “’No Man’s Land’: Fairy Tales, Gender, Socialization, Satire, and Trauma During the First and Second World Wars," Grand Valley Journal of History, (Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 1, 2012), 3. 264 Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 1-10.

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both poets returning again to the tale, even after they had been published.265 By the last

quarter of the century, however, there was a dramatic upsurge in the production of

illustrated versions of these tales. This can be explained in part by the innovations in

printing technology—lithography enabled unprecedented speed and accuracy. This

resulted in a multi-tiered market, with chapbooks on the low end and ornately

embellished gift books at the high end.

In studying the history of fairy tales, which are loosely defined as stories featuring

fantastic or magical elements with idealized endings, we see over time a range of socio-

political issues that are explored through the use of the genre.266 In World War I, the

Allied forces compiled a collection of tales from eleven allied nations with illustrations

by Arthur Rackham, binding them together in a collection to show unity.267 During the

same time Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) used her Tales of Peter Rabbit, which is arguably a

scaled down sub-genre of the fairy tale, to explore the repercussions of using animals to

support the conflict and to bring attention to the importation of German goods into

Britain.268 In World War II, this appropriation of fairy tales for political purposes

continued with the Nazi regime recreating classic tales to rally solidarity behind the

265 Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 77-117. 266 "fairy tale, n. and adj.". OED Online. September 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/67750?redirectedFrom=fairy+tale (accessed October 08, 2016). For an in depth discussion on the term “fairy tale” and how it evolved see Jack Zipes, “A Fairy Tale Is More than Just a Fairy Tale,” (Book 2.0 2, 2012) 95-102. 267 All of these tales were nationalistic, showing a pride in nation and a connection to history during tumultuous times. Jessica Short, "Found It in the Archives: War and Fairy Tales," Shh! The Blog of the Charleston Library Society, (April 12, 2013. Accessed October 15, 2016) http://librarysociety.blogspot.ca/2013/04/found-it-in-archives-war-and-fairy-tales.html 268 Claire Duffin, "Pottered History: The Political Side of Beatrix Potter," The Telegraph, (January 11, 2014. Accessed October 11, 2016) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10565967/Pottered-history-The-political-side-of-Beatrix-Potter.html

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Führer.269 The Nazi propagandists used fairy tales as political vessels for their ideologies

as well, developing minor characters into larger contributors to the plot and connected

them with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), to show the racial superiority of the “Aryan” racial

grouping.270 For example, both the Allied forces and the Nazis portrayed their beliefs

through the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, with a wolf who resembled Hitler terrorizing

the innocent people of Europe, or an Aryan Red Riding Hood being terrorized by soldiers

in allied uniforms.271 While many of these versions of tales have been overlooked, or

suppressed, they stand as examples of the convention of imbuing socio-political

ideologies into tales often associated with childhood.

According to Hillard, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Victorian audience

“understood fairy tales to represent England’s political landscape.”272 By associating his

flower books and socialism with fairy tales, Crane was demonstrating that he was not

solely an intermedial artist, but he was also an intertextual writer: drawing on and

utilizing conventions associated with specific genres in his work, in order to connect his

illustrations and writings with the genre’s messages and morals.273

The quest narrative in mythology and folklore is typically understood as a hero’s

journey, in which an individual, usually a young male, leaves the comforts of his social

environment to battle and defeat monsters, and return home in order to receive renown

269 Allan Hall, "Nazi Fairy Tales Paint Hitler as Little Red Riding Hood's Saviour." The Telegraph, (April 15, 2010. Accessed October 11, 2016). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7594061/Nazi-fairy-tales-paint-Hitler-as-Little-Red-Riding-Hoods-saviour.html 270 Qinna Shen, The Politics of Magic : DEFA Fairy-tale Films, Series in Fairy-tale Studies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), 31-34. 271 Natalie Hayton, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in the 21st Century: Adaptation, Archetypes, and the Appropriation of a Fairy Tale, (Doctoral thesis, De Montfort University, 2013), pg 193. 272 Hilliard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 5. 273 An example of this would be the phrase “Once upon a time,” which when read, immediately alludes to the fairy tale and its familiar conventions, such as the anticipation of a “happy ending,” the suspension of disbelief, and the potential for magic. Heerspink, “’No Man’s Land’: Fairy Tales, Gender, Socialization, Satire, and Trauma During the First and Second World Wars," 2012.

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and glory, often in the form of a kingdom.274 This was seized by Marx in his influential

essay, “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy” (1867), in which he states that there

will be an inevitable revolution in society when labourers take ownership of their labour

and its products.275 However, envisioning a utopia was not the method by which change

would occur. Marx deployed the myths featuring Perseus and Medusa, which is likely

where Crane got his snake motif, to demonstrate socialism’s inevitability.276 This concept

would have been appealing to Crane as it played into his fascination with narrative while

also providing him with a ready to use metaphor for the success of socialism. However,

Crane would expand on the mythological examples presented by Marx, to include

characters and narratives from fairy tales, adventure stories, and legends. Much like the

adventure story genre, Queen Summer sees a conflict that develops at an urgent pace,

with protagonists who struggle for their own versions of a happy ending. Both

protagonists end up enriched by their struggles to achieve happiness and discover a form

of pleasure and contentment previously unknown to them. This happiness is

accomplished through the intervention of the Queen of Summer, who is the embodiment

of British socialism. Unlike Marx’s masculine and combative Perseus, Crane’s Queen of

Summer—a female allegory reminiscent of Britannia—bring peace through inclusion and

beauty, demonstrated in the climactic scene in which she embraces and draws together

roses and lilies.

274 Hayton, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in the 21st Century: Adaptation, Archetypes, and the Appropriation of a Fairy Tale, 20-21. 275 Karl Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy [by] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Lewis S. Feuer, ed. (Anchor Books, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1959), 133-167. 276 Marx, “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,” in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, 136.

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Crane’s brand of socialism has been difficult to see in works like this because it is

often overshadowed by the intensity of William Morris’s devotion to Marx. Caroline

Arscott and others deal extensively with the relationship between Morris’s involvement

in the Arts and Crafts Movement and the ideas of labour over industrialization that were

stimulated by Marx’s critique.277 However, Crane’s expression of Arts and Crafts

motivations, delivered through industrial methods, emphasize the artist’s agency. He

connects England’s past to England’s future, through aesthetics. Crucially, rather than

having this story play out in a distant and exotic location, like the boy/youth adventure

stories set in colonial contexts that were popular in this period, Crane situates his struggle

for civilization inside the immediate and recognizable setting of an English garden.278

Crane departs from Marx by envisioning an utopia in order to express the benefits of

socialism for Britain, as well as his perspective on the artist’s place in this new society.

As in the quest narratives before it, the combatants are also rewarded for their struggle

with a happily-ever-after conclusion in the form of a harmonious socialist garden

kingdom.

277 Caroline Arscott, “William Morris: Decoration and Materialism” in Hemingway, Andrew. Marxism and the History of Art : From William Morris to the New Left, (Marxism and Culture. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2006), 9-27. 278 Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1850-1894) Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886) were popular adventure stories for boys, along with the writings of Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894) and Captain Frederick Marrayat’s (1792-1848) Masterman Ready; or the Wreck of the Pacific (1841-2). While the boys adventure stories are well known Thomas Fair has recently written an article on the forgotten adventure stories for girls that examines how heroines were portrayed in the popular genre. Thomas Fair, "19th-Century English Girls' Adventure Stories: Domestic Imperialism, Agency, and the Female Robinsonades," Rocky Mountain Review (68, no. 2, 2014) 142-58. http://www.jstor.org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/stable/24372823.

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Part II: Visioning Utopia: The Garden and Sleeping Beauty

The story of Sleeping Beauty seemed to captivate English artists of the mid- to

late-nineteenth century, and was popular among all levels of society. It resonated with

many political and artistic movements, but found prominence in the socialist propaganda

as a symbol for the awakening of a new age. Crane’s Briar Rose cabinet, constructed and

decorated in 1905, features image cycles on the exterior and interior, which together tell

the story of Sleeping Beauty (fig. 43-a, 43-b). The exterior consists of a briar, or a rose

thicket, similar to that represented by the artist Edward Burne-Jones in his work entitled

The Legend of the Briar Rose (1873-90) (fig. 33).279 Crane’s rendition—which was likely

influenced by Burne-Jones’s paintings as Crane had seen earlier versions of the works as

the artist developed the compositions—is less dense, but is still made up of dog roses and

slender trees.280 The dog rose in Crane’s cabinet is in its natural form, with no grafting

processes being enacted on the plant. In the top right corner, barely visible through the

dense and foreboding forest, is a castle tower, which invites the viewer to play the role of

the Prince, who is enticed by the promise of adventure. The only way to traverse the

thicket is to open the door of the cabinet, where the viewer is presented with three panel

images: the sleeping court members, the discovery of the Princess, and the handmaidens,

279 While Burne-Jones has not been recognized as a socialist, his wife, life-long friend William Morris, and many other acquaintances were heavily involved in the socialist movement. While Burne-Jones’s mythical paintings explored the same ideas as Crane there has been no evidence of easily identifiable political iconography contained in them. It is important to note though that Burne-Jones did not seem to mind his work associated with, or referenced by socialists. He allowed William Morris to write an accompanying poem to his The Legend of the Briar Rose series that had strong undertones of socialist rhetoric, as well as exhibiting his work for free at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel; a common practice by socialist artists who wished to bring beauty to the poverty stricken areas of London. Burne-Jones even went so far as to specify in his bill of sale for the series that the canvases had to be shown in a free public exhibition before they could be privately owned, and taken to a domestic setting. Rager, “Smite This Sleeping World Awake", 442. Frances Spalding, discusses the relationship between Morris and Burne-Jones’s The Legend of the Briar Rose in Magnificent Dreams : Burne-Jones and the Late Victorians. (Oxford: New York: Phaidon ; Dutton, 1978) 47. 280 Crane, Reminiscences, 104-105.

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awakening from their sleep (fig. 43-a). Throughout these scenes, the viewer is presented

with yet another rose, the English rose that is similar in design to the Tudor Rose, which

was used emblematically throughout English history.281 This rose is embroidered on

clothing, bed sheets, carpets, curtains, and samplers visible throughout the scene.282

Outside the window, the forest and briers recall the exterior of the cabinet and show the

route that the viewer took to reach the sleeping figure.

As discussed in Chapter two, in the language of flowers the dog rose is often

understood as a symbol that evokes nostalgia for the past but could also represent pain

and pleasure.283 This is due to the dog rose’s association in Christian mysticism with the

pain of Christ’s death, but also the pleasure that humanity secured by his sacrifice and

ascension.284 In many cases, the blooms of the dog rose have variations of colour

throughout a single brier that range from white to red. Some authors of flower lore

associate this variation with the droplets of blood from Christ’s wounds that fell on the

petals of flowers that surrounded the cross.285 Crane was aware of these associations and

so his use of the dog rose is not surprising, particularly in a cabinet that tells a fairy tale,

which was a historicized genre. Fairy tales are imbued with history and nostalgia, which

during the nineteenth century were argued to be “rooted in rural beliefs and the rites of

childhood, [conveying] a certain primitive innocence and moral clarity.”286 The

281 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 163. 282 Potter, Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World, 135. 283 Arscott, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings, 117. 284 Feydeau, From Marie Antoinette's Garden: An Eighteenth-century Horticultural Notebook, 208. The five petals of the dog rose are said to represent the five wounds on Christ’s body. 285 Feydeau, From Marie Antoinette's Garden: An Eighteenth-century Horticultural Notebook, 208. 286 Rager, "Smite This Sleeping World Awake": Edward Burne-Jones and The Legend of the Briar Rose", 443.

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Victorians understood the fairy tale to be “a sign of England’s lost innocence and

imaginary perfection.”287

Crane began his artistic relationship with the tale while working on his sixpenny

books with Edmund Evans in the late 1870’s. Arguably the most successful of the

collaborations with Evans, and a book which is widely available today, was The Sleeping

Beauty in the Wood (1876), which contains some of the first commercially printed book

illustrations to feature Crane’s allegorical symbols (fig. 41).288 The figure of Sleeping

Beauty became integral to Crane’s works on the interrelations of art and politics,

becoming a design element that the artist would incorporate into many of his works in

connection with his allegorical figure of Freedom. The artist himself even acknowledged

the importance of the tale to his society in his Reminiscences, where he discusses the use

of the tale as an” allegory of the revival of arts and the new Ideal of Life.”289 This use of

Sleeping Beauty as an allegorical figure can be best demonstrated in Crane’s masque

Beauty’s Awakening: A Masque of Winter and Spring (c. 1898) along with his cover

design for the twelfth issue of the The Pioneer, the political journal for the Fabian Society,

in 1887 (fig. 52), and his nursery wallpaper design of 1879 (fig. 42).290 The masque and

both of these designs show the artist’s preoccupation with the tale in relation to its

political importance. Crane chooses the tale of Sleeping Beauty to illustrate what the

Fabian Society believed they were accomplishing by bringing socialism to England;

namely, bringing truth to the people. This can be seen in the position of the Princess, who

is depicted sleeping beneath a lamp that bears the phrase “What is Truth?” The answer

287 Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 121. 288 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 155, 155. 289 Crane, Reminiscences, 452. 290 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 155-156; Walter Crane and The Studio. Beauty's Awakening : A Masque of Winter and of Spring, (London: Studio, 1899)

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will presumably be discovered when the Prince, who in this case is understood to be the

symbol of the Fabian society and, incidentally, is wearing Perseus’s winged helmet,

finally succeeds in waking the allegorical figure of England from her slumber. The

wallpaper carries a similar motif, with one notable difference. Once the Prince resurrects

the sleeping woman, her awakening will also rouse the labourers, symbolized by the

spinning woman, the minstrel, and handmaiden, who are entangled in the thorny briars.291

All of these previous treatments of Sleeping Beauty would be referenced in Crane’s final

work on the subject–The Briar Rose.

A question that needs to be answered is why seize upon the story of Sleeping

Beauty, particularly when other fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White feature

prominently laborious tasks, played out in domestic acts of cooking and cleaning and

drudgery exploited by oppressors.292 Three things complicate this: the first is that

Cinderella and Snow White worked within a realm relegated to women, whereas spinning

could be associated with more industrial methods of production—as it had transformed

from a form of female manual labour to one of industry—in which machinery was the

dominant form of manufacturing. The second is that the act of labour that causes the

Princess’s downfall in Sleeping Beauty can be connected to textile and fashion design,

which were areas of interest for many artists in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Crane

developed cartoons for tapestries, which is, in fact, how he met William Morris and was

first introduced to structured socialism. The third issue is that the heroines in Cinderella

291 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 156-157. The peacock feather is traditionally a symbol of eternal life or resurrection in early Christian traditions. 292 This is not to say that these tales were not incorporated into socialist messages, as Cinderella was very popular in textual forms of propaganda, such as Blatchford’s Clarion, and the Labour Prophet, rather that they did not lend themselves to the imaginations of socialist artists. Sumpter, The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale, 101-105.

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and Snow White enjoy their labour to a certain extent and see it as their duty, whereas the

heroine in Sleeping Beauty is drawn to the work out of fetishistic curiosity in craft rather

than necessity, traits socialist artists would have found helpful for a variety of reasons.

At the end of the tales Cinderella and Snow White, the title characters are both

rewarded by being elevated and reinstated to the aristocracy, removing the need for

labour, altogether. The tale of Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, centers on touching a

spinning wheel or spindle, an act that (in some versions of the tale) throws the kingdom

into a century-long slumber. Two endings are possible: through action, the slumber is

broken, or through inaction, the eponymous heroine remains in a form of stasis. This

choice is shown in both Burne-Jones’s The Legend of the Briar Rose and Crane’s The

Briar Rose and both artists chose to depict that moment before a decision is made,

creating tension. Will society awaken with the acceptance of socialism, or it will society

continue to suppress social development?

The concept of time was important to Victorians. According to Hambrook,

Hillard, and Schaffer, the idea of stasis and degeneration was prevalent in Victorian

literature.293 The end of the century caused anxiety, but also hope, which fairy tales

generally, and Sleeping Beauty, specifically, could reference.294 The Princess is asleep,

devoid of agency, but if certain conditions are met, the promise of revival is implied.

Crane depicts an hourglass on the exterior and interior cycles of his cabinet, marking the

time until change occurs. Walter Crane’s Briar Rose adopted a fairy tale lens through

which to view his own society. However, unlike Burne-Jones, Crane added a physically

active element to the contemplative. By placing the story within a cabinet, Crane involves

293 Hillard, Spellbound: The Fairy Tale and the Victorians, 77-117. 294 Talia Schaffer, Literature and Culture at the Fin de Siècle, (New York: Longman, 2007) 3.

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the viewer, but through the action of opening the door, he also, as O’Neill argues,

“creates a political statement that unfolds before [the viewer’s] eyes.”295 Thus, the

beholder pushes the narrative of the story along, and transforms a society, transporting

himself into a different world, an active agent in awakening socialism within.296 This

construction acknowledges the subversive potential of the fairy tales. In Queen Summer,

Crane invites the beholder to enact change, not by opening a cupboard, but by opening a

book.

Part III: Up the Garden Path in Queen Summer

In combining socialism with fairy tales, Crane was naturalizing political activism.

There is a history of acclimatizing foreign ideas, spaces, people and objects through the

metaphor of the garden. Jill H. Casid’s work on “natural possession,” which is defined as

incorporating plants from far off places into the familiar English landscape, demonstrates

how effective this metaphor could be for reconciling politically uncomfortable ideas.

Crane re-imagined a socialist Britain and reconciled this conflict, redirecting the

discourse surrounding socialism by focusing it on the anthropomorphized landscape of

the garden and its inhabitants. As discussed in the previous chapter, this switch in focus

allowed the artist to draw on the symbolism attached to particular flowers, but also the

historical discourses surrounding the garden itself. This dialogue is extensive and goes

well beyond the scope of this thesis, so I will concentrate on the political arguments

295 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 163. 296 O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 163-164. While it is no longer possible for individuals to open this piece themselves, at the time it would have been encouraged to do so, and audiences would have had the opportunity to interact with it in its intended way.

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relating to the garden in England, in order to show how Crane effectively utilized them in

his work.

Queen Summer is not the first, and certainly not the last use of the garden

metaphor in Crane’s art. In 1897, The Labour Leader, a socialist newspaper for the

Independent Labour Party, published a political cartoon by Crane, which can be seen as

an extension of the ideas he explored in Queen Summer. The cartoon depicts a winged

angel, who stands outside a garden of “Economic Emancipation,” which appears to be

nearly identical to the garden depicted in Queen Summer (fig. 53). The angel is offering a

weary labourer a key to open the gate, through which a lush garden brimming with

flowers and other vegetation can be glimpsed. We are meant to compare this paradise,

accessible only with the key of “Political Independence,” to the weed-infested grounds

upon which the labourer currently stands. This cartoon, which was not intended for

commercial gain, certainly encapsulates many of the more subtle depictions of his

socialist propaganda found throughout Crane’s oeuvre, especially Queen Summer, but in

this case, he is more direct.

Other leading socialists shared Crane’s idea of a garden as representative of a

utopia during this time. In 1893 Robert Blatchford (1851-1943), a socialist activist and

journalist, wrote Merrie England, a collection of essays on socialism that stood as an

introduction to the tenets of socialism for the working man.297 First appearing in weekly

articles of the Clarion, Blatchford offered a vision of society as “a garden full of light and

air and flowers cleared of weeds,” that was open to all people, and connected to the long

idealized political history of the garden as a place of harmonious bounty.298 The title

297 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 95. 298 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 95.

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Merrie England that was used by Blatchford has an attachment to the Arts and Crafts

Movement, and the artists who championed the style in their work. The term “Merrie

England” relates to the idealized version of the medieval past that was popular with

socialists of the time, as it recalled a nostalgic England before the Industrial

Revolution.299 Since Crane and Morris looked to the medieval past for models of art in

society, this aesthetic utopia that was represented in their works, and others like them,

became a vividly imagined goal that served as a rallying image for the socialists as it

represented a time of acceptance and beauty that had been lost with the advent of the

machine.300 As the metropole expanded, diminishing the wild, green spaces that once

evoked ideas of fairies and magic, this mythic utopia receded farther into the past.301 To

compensate for this loss I would like to suggest that the garden became a physical and

metaphorical representation of both civilized and uncivilized nature to in Crane’s work; a

place of intercession where the civilized person was allowed to interact with the fantastic

that usually dwelt in the depths of the untamed countryside. This idea of garden as

mediator between the real and the imaginary is seen not only in Queen Summer, but the

other flower books as well, where Crane makes the point of stating, through image and

text, that has his fantastical flower people dwell not in the spaces of the unknown

landscape, but inside the walls of the cultivated garden. This idea advanced by Casid that

299 O’Neill, Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 95. While not discussing the nostalgic landscape that the Pre-Raphaelites and Crane sought in their work under the title “Merrie England,” Deming provides a very similar definition of the wish-landscapes that fascinated these artists; Wish-landscapes and Garden Cities: They myth of the garden in allegories of English reform 1880 to 1920, 97. 300 For a better idea of how Morris treated the idea of “Merrie England” in his work see Caroline Arscott’s William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings (2008) and O’Neill’s "Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics,” for Crane. 301 The distinction between garden and wilderness is made very clear in fairy tales and the discourse surrounding landscape, especially in England. The antagonists of the fairy tale Prince are found in the wild spaces, past the walls of civilization and the controlled gardens within. This topic is one that cannot be fully explored in this paper but deserves more attention, especially in regards to Crane.

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“[gardens] produce the past not as foreign and inaccessible country but as living history

tilled out of the ground of the ‘country’ in and for the present and potentially future” is

especially important when considering Crane’s flower works as the garden and its

inhabitants in Queen Summer drew on the past in order to comment on the present, while

simultaneously presenting a hopeful image for the future.302 Evoking the past through

land was not constricted to reality however, as some of the most evocative renditions of

the past are found in constructed landscapes by artists and writers.303

The urge, when looking at Queen Summer, is to think that Crane is referencing the

Garden of Eden, since “roses and lilies covered the grounds of paradise.”304 However, an

argument can be made that Crane was naturalizing political change by drawing on the

political efficacy of traditions in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century landscape

design. “Georgic” landscaping, a term coined by Casid, is a sub-genre of the picturesque

that hybridized foreign and domestic gardens in order to make landscape a tool of

empire.305 These landscapes, which included depictions of ornamental farms, picturesque

gardens, and colonial vistas, worked as mediators between nature and man, work and

leisure, metropole and empire, and civilization and the exotic.306 These references to flora

naturalized the process of colonization.

302 Jill H. Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) xii. 303 For a more in depth look at constructed landscapes during the Victorian era see Margaret Deming’s Wish-landscapes and Garden Cities: They myth of the garden in allegories of English reform 1880 to 1920, (Unpublished doctoral thesis. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 2001), specifically Chapter 2 “Landscape and Victorian Structures of Feeling,” 47-109. 304 Feydeau, From Marie Antoinette's Garden: An Eighteenth-century Horticultural Notebook, 208. Feydeau writes that the rose was, in part, such a popular garden flower because of its association with the garden of paradise and the notion that “Adam and Eve slept in a floral bower that rained rose petals down on them.” Marie Antoinette used the rose extensively in her garden of love for this reason. 305 Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, xxii and 45. 306 Jill Casid discusses the use of landscaping in conjunction with the growth of the British Empire during the eighteenth century, and how cultivating gardens and farms stood as a metaphor for cultivating the British Empire and civilization in her book Sowing Empire.

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Crane, who was critical of empire, nonetheless used the tools of its naturalization

in his flower books by combining notions of gardening and landscaping with the

ingrained traditions associated with the genre of fairy tales.307 While they have been

viewed as tools of escapism, Crane's representations of fairy tales and gardens are

featured in some of the works most expressive of his political beliefs. Intersplicing

different emblems in his representations of the garden demonstrate that an intermixed

landscape is an improvement on nature.308 Crane’s garden in Queen Summer transforms

from a site of conflict into an oasis, a place of harmony where labour of all kinds is

valued. It has been radically transformed, yet is still familiar in its difference.

This concept of conserving the old in the new is crucial to keep in mind when

considering Crane’s politics, as it is what has placed him on the fringe of consideration

when looking at British socialism historically. Marx’s inevitable revolution is tempered

in Crane’s happily-ever-after, with the vision of a utopic garden, in which artists take

their rightful place as agents of change through beauty. In the dénouement, portrayed

immediately before the pages showing the reconciliation of the combatants, the Queen of

Summer, who appears silhouetted against a rising celestial orb, ascends from a garden of

lilies and roses in full bloom, while the bat of capitalism retreats and the sleep-inducing

poppies of empire wither (fig. 54). Typically for a work of Walter Crane, the text departs

from the sun symbol, a staple socialist emblem. He writes, “Beneath the summer full

orbed moon,/ Ruddy and gold that rose full soon,/ Like rose and lily fused in fire,/ Ere the

307 For a discussion on Crane’s ideas on empire see Felix Driver’s "In Search of the Imperial Map: Walter Crane an the Image of Empire," and Pippa Biltcliffe, “Walter Crane and the Imperial Federation Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire (1886),” Imago Mundi 57, no. 1 (2005): 63-69. 308 Casid, Sowing Empire, 13.

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sunset’s torch expire.”309 The figural meaning of the images is overshadowed by the

textual components of the tale, but through an intermedial examination of his works, his

true meaning has been unearthed.

309 Crane, Queen Summer, 37.

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Conclusion:

This case study, that examined Walter Crane’s Queen Summer in relation to his

other media, has only begun to demonstrate the political significance of his illustrated

books, long relegated to the apolitical confines of the nursery. While this study has not

demonstrated the full scope and importance of this text and the flower book genre, more

generally, it stands as a beginning stage in understanding Crane’s independence from his

peers and their expressions of change. Crane reconciled tensions between high and low

art, fine art and craft, capitalism and socialism throughout his artistic career. However,

these interventions have been diminished over his lifetime and after his death, as critics

and scholars divide and categorize the artist’s work by medium in order to study it within

a confined genre of similar objects. By separating print from paint, decorative from

political, the intermedialty that not only connected, but strengthened Crane’s work is lost,

and the underlying message of beauty and art for all is lost with it.

This thesis has provided a foundation for further study into Crane’s flower books

as objects that were not created in a separate genre from the rest of the artists work, but as

agents of intermediality that were exemplary of Crane’s style. Queen Summer was

created at a time of great excitement for Crane. The Arts and Crafts Movement, which he

championed, was flourishing, while the excitement of the potential for a socialist change

was visible as the dawn of a new century approached, and Crane’s fervour is easily

perceived in the pages of the book. This early rendition of a socialist utopia requires a

comparative study with those created after the turn of the century, after many of the

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socialist groups that Crane once upheld succumbed to radicalism, as they explore similar,

yet notably different approaches to the naturalization of socialism in Britain.

The scope of this thesis has been confined mainly to Crane’s success in Britain, as

an artist and a socialist. However, it is arguable that Crane’s decorative political message

had far more success abroad than it did at home, especially in Germany where many of

his works were sold. This international success of Crane’s work deserves closer study,

particularly because of the nationalistic emblems that his messages are often coded in.

Likewise, though scholars such as Morna O’Neill, Horst Dölvers, and Andrea Korda

have made notable strides in the scholarly consideration of Crane’s illustrated books,

further study still needs to be done on the extent of Crane’s intermedial iconography

contained in his commercial works, and on the idea that Crane’s true artistic medium of

creation was not illustration, painting, or printing but narrative.

P. G. Kondoy begins his comprehensive work on Crane by stating that when

future historians look back on the last decades of the nineteenth century Crane and Morris

“will stand out conspicuously, like [two] isolated high peaks above the minor summits”

due to their artistic and political aims, methods, and views.310 You would be amiss to

write on Crane without mentioning the impact that Morris had on his career. However,

Konody’s image of Crane as a separate entity, not as a disciple of Morris, but as a

successful collaborator, is one that needs to be adopted when considering Crane and his

career of aesthetic politics, as this separation from Morris allows the nuances of Crane’s

pragmatic socialism to become apparent and distinguishes the radical approach to art and

politics inherent in his work

310 Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 1.

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Although my study of Queen Summer has only uncovered more questions on

Crane that need to be addressed, and more content than this thesis can adequately speak

to, I have established that Walter Crane was not just the artist of the nursery or the artist

of socialism, but rather he was an intermedial artist whose pragmatic socialism—his

ability to situate a socialist message within a commercial commodity—distinguished him

from other activists and illustrators of his time. I have argued that Crane’s use of

irreducible indeterminacy and intermediality allowed for him to successfully reconcile his

position as both a commercial artist and socialist activist, along with his desire to be

considered both a fine art painter and a craftsman.

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Figures

Image removed due to copyright

Figure 1: Walter Crane, The Fate of Persephone, 1878. Oil and tempera. Private Collection. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 36.


Figure 2: Walter Crane, Pandora, 1885. Watercolour, Private Collection. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 116.

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Figure 3: Walter Crane, The Riddle of the Sphinx, 1887. Oil on canvas. Untraced. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 125.


Figure 4: Jeffrey & Co., after Walter Crane, frieze for Corona Vitae, 1889. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 132.

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Figure 5: Jeffrey & Co., after Walter Crane, Corona Vitae, 1889. Wallpaper. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 114.


Figure 6: Walter Crane, “Pandora Wonders at the Box,” illustration for Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, 1892. Coloured lithograph. (London: Osgood & McIlvaine). Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 123.

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Figure 7: Walter Crane, frontispiece for Fabian Essays in Socialism, 1889. Lithograph. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 127.


Figure 8: Walter Crane, illustration for “The Craftsman’s Dream,” pen and ink, c. 1889. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 136.

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Figure 9: Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 1, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Figure 10: Walter Crane, title page from Household Stories from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm, 1882. Lithograph.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 11: Walter Crane, The Skeleton in Armour, 1881-1883. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 84-89.

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Figure 12: Walter Crane, detail from The Skeleton in Armour, 1881-1883. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 88.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 13: Walter Crane, The Strong Man, printed in the May Day issue of Justice, 1897. Lithograph.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 14: Walter Crane, Freedom, 1885. Oil on canvas, 182 × 122 cm. Private Collection. Photo: O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890, 2010, 62.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 15: Walter Crane, The Capitalist Vampire, first published in Justice, 22 August 1885. Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896, London: Twentieth Century Press, 1896, 6. Lithograph. Photo: O'Neill, "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago," 2015, 114.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 16: Walter Crane, A Garland for May Day, 1895, printed in the May Day issue of Justice. Lithograph. Photo: Greg Smith and Sarah Hyde, Walter Crane 1845-1915, 1989, .87.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 17: Walter Crane, International Solidarity of Labour: Labour’s May Day, Dedicated to the Workers of the World, first published in Commonweal, 24 May 1890. Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896, London: Twentieth Century Press, 1896, 11. Lithograph. Photo: O'Neill, "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago," 2015, 116.

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Figure 18: Walter Crane, The Workers May Pole, first published in Justice, 13 April 1894. Reprinted in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886–1896, London: Twentieth Century Press, 1896, 14. Lithograph. Photo: O'Neill, "Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane's The Anarchists of Chicago," 2015, 108.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 19: Walter Crane, The New Era, frontispiece for The New Party Described by Some of its Members, 1894. London: Hodder Brothers, 1894, Working Class Movement Library, Salford. Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Art and Labour’s Cause is One: Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915, 2008, 63.

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Figure 24:Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 28, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Figure 28: Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 36, 1891. London: Cassell.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 29: Sir Emery Walker, Walter Crane as Cimabue, c. 1897. Whole-plate glass negative. London: National Portrait Gallery.


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Figure 32: Walter Crane, Flora’s Feast: A Masque of Flowers, pg. 29, 1889. Coloured Lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 33: Edward Burne-Jones, The Legend of the Briar Rose, The Prince Enters the Briar Wood, 1873-1890. Oil on canvas, 48” x 90”. Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, England: The Faringdon Collection Trust.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 34: John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-1852. Oil on canvas. 30”x40”. London: Tate Britain Museum.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 35: Victorian see and fertilizer trade cards, c. 1885-1890. All between 12.8 and 13.5 x 7.5 and 8 cm. Photo: Syme, Alison. A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, 40.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 36: Cover of Maule’s Seed Catalog, 1896, 27 x 19.7 cm. Photo: Syme, Alison. A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, 149.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 37: Odoardo Fialetti, Petal Venus, plate 4, 1631. Engraved by Francesco Valesio, in Adriann van de Spiegel, De Formato foetu. Frankfurt: Mattheus Merian. Photo: Syme, Alison. A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-siècle Art. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, 9.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 38: “The Red Rose of Lancaster, the White Rose of York, and the Red and White United Rose of Tudor,” from Parker’s Annales of England, Oxford, 1855-1857. Photo: Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner, Johanna. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees. New York: Tudor Publishing. 1960, 77.

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Figure 39: Florentine lily above Queen Summer’s throne. Walter Crane, Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 12, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 41: Walter Crane, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, centerfold illustration, 1876. Coloured lithograph. London: George Routledge & Sons.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 42: Walter Crane, Sleeping Beauty, 1879. Wallpaper. London: Victoria and Albert Museum.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 43-a: Walter Crane, The Briar Rose, cabinet exterior, 1905. Tempera and gesso on panel. Glasgow: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 43-b: Walter Crane, The Briar Rose, cabinet interior, 1905. Tempera and gesso on panel. Glasgow: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

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Figure 44: Rosa Canina L (Dog Rose) from 1885 Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz by Otto Wilhelm Thorné, 1885, Gera, Germany.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 45: Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Rosa gallica pontiana, from "Les Roses," 1817-24. Hand-coloured stipple engraving.

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Image removed due to copyright Figure 46: Grafting diagram, from Arscott, Caroline. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2008, 118.

Figure 47: Walter Crane, “Clash of Lilies and Roses,”: Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 20-21, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Figure 48: Walter Crane, detail of rose on hip in clash of lilies and roses from Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 20, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

Figure 49: Walter Crane, detail of fleur-de-lis on shield of lily on clash of lilies and roses from Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 21, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

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Figure 50: Walter Crane, initial clash of rose and lily champions from Queen Summer: or the Tourney of the Lily and the Rose, pg. 16-17, 1891. Coloured lithograph. London: Cassell.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 51: Walter Crane, England’s Emblem, 1895. Photograph from Walter Crane Archive, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.

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Figure 52: Walter Crane, cover design, The Pioneer 12 (October 1887). Photo: O’Neill, Morna. Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890. New Haven, Connecticut: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2010, 157.

Image removed due to copyright Figure 53: Walter Crane, “Political Independence the Key to Economic Emancipation” from a Supplement of the Labour Leader Diamond Jubilee Number (19 June 1897). Photo: O'Neill, Morna. "Walter Crane’s Floral Fantasy: The Garden in Arts and Crafts Politics." Garden History 36, no. 2 (Winter 2008), 290.

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Bibliography

Bibliography of Works by Walter Crane

Crane, Walter. An Artists Reminiscences. New York: Macmillan, 1907. Crane, Walter, and The Studio. Beauty's Awakening : A Masque of Winter and of

Spring. London: Studio, 1899. Crane, Walter. The Bases of Design. London, G. Bell, 1898. Crane, Walter. The Claims of Decorative Art. London: Lawrence and Bullen,1892.

Crane, Walter. ‘How I Became a Socialist’, Justice (30 June 1894), p.6. Crane, Walter. Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New. Third ed.

Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1968.

Crane, Walter. Queen Summer: The Tournament of the Rose. London: Cassell, 1891.

Crane, Walter. “Why Socialism Appeals to Artists.” Atlantic Monthly 49/411

(January 1892): 110-115. Crane, Walter. William Morris to Whistler : Papers and Addresses on Art and

Craft and the Commonweal. Folcroft, Pa.]: Folcroft Library Editions, 1973.

Crane, Walter. “Work of Walter Crane.” Easter Art Annual, Art Journal 1898 . London: J. S. Virtue, 1898. Bibliography

Arscott, Caroline. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings. New Haven [Conn.: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2008.

Barrell, John. "Radicalism, Visual Culture, and Spectacle in the 1790s." Romanticism on the Net 46, no. "Romantic Spectacle" (May 2007).

Barringer, T. J. Men at Work : Art and Labour in Victorian Britain. New Haven:

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2005.

Biltcliffe, Pippa. “Walter Crane and the Imperial Federation Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire (1886).” Imago Mundi 57, no. 1 (2005): 63-69.

136

Booth, Michael. Victorian Spectacular Theatre, 1850-1910. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

Brockington, Grace. "Rhyming Pictures: Walter Crane and the Universal

Language of Art." Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 28, no. 4 (2012): 359-73.

Buchan, John. The Novel and the Fairy Tale,. Oxford: [Printed at the University

Press, by John Johnson], 1931. Buchmann, Stephen L. The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology,

and How They Change Our Lives. First Scribner Hardcover ed. New York: Scribner, 2015.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Edited by Donald J. Gray. Second ed.

Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. Casid, Jill H. Sowing Empire : Landscape and Colonization. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2005. "Christmas Books." Times [London, England] 25 Dec. 1879: 4. The Times Digital

Archive. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. http://find.galegroup.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=guel77241&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&docId=CS67288473&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0

Crane, Anthony. “My Grandfather Walter Crane,” The Yale University Library

Gazette 31/3 (January 1957): 99. Crawford, Alan. “Crane, Walter (1845–1915).” Alan Crawford In Oxford

Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2013. http://www.oxforddnb.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/article/32616 (accessed February 16, 2015).

Deming, Margaret. Wish-landscapes and Garden Cities: They myth of the garden

in allegories of English reform 1880 to 1920. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 2001.

Dölvers, Horst. Fables Less and Less Fabulous : English Fables and Parables of

the Nineteenth Century and Their Illustrations. Newark, [Del.] : London ; Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press ; Associated University Presses, 1997.

137

Driver, Felix. "In Search of the Imperial Map: Walter Crane an the Image of Empire." In History Workshop Journal, 146-157. Issue. 69. London: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Duffin, Claire. "Pottered History: The Political Side of Beatrix Potter." The Telegraph. January 11, 2014. Accessed October 11, 2016. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10565967/Pottered-history-The-political-side-of-Beatrix-Potter.html.

Engen, Rodney K. Walter Crane as a Book Illustrator. London: Academy

Editions; 1975. Fair, Thomas. "19th-Century English Girls' Adventure Stories: Domestic

Imperialism, Agency, and the Female Robinsonades." Rocky Mountain Review 68, no. 2 (2014): 142-58.

Feydeau, Elisabeth De., and Catherine Pegard. From Marie Antoinette's Garden :

An Eighteenth-century Horticultural Notebook. English Language ed. Paris: Flammarion, 2013.

Fowkes Tobin, Beth. "Imperial Designs: Botanical Illustration and the British

Botanic Empire." In Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-century British Painting, 174-201. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.

Fraser, James. “Walter Crane and His Socialist Children's Book Illustrations,”

Phaedrus: An International Annual of Children’s Literature Research, 1981, 6-10. George, Sam. Botany, Sexuality, and Women's Writing 1760-1830: From Modest

Shoot to Forward Plant. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Gerard, David E. Walter Crane and the Rhetoric of Art. London: Nine Elms Press,

1999. Gibson-Wood, Carol. "Picture Consumption in London at the End of the

Seventeenth Century." The Art Bulletin 84, no. 3 (2002): 491-500. Goody, Jack. The Culture of Flowers. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1993. Gould, F. J. Pages for Young Socialists. With Prefaces by H. M. Hyndman and J.

Kerr Hardier, and Illustrations by Walter Crane. National Labour Press, 1913. Grimm, Jakob and Whilhelm Grimm. Grimm's Complete Fairy Tale. With

illustrations by Arthur Rackham. New York: Barnes & Noble Inc. 2009.

138

Hall, Allan. "Nazi Fairy Tales Paint Hitler as Little Red Riding Hood's Saviour." The Telegraph. April 15, 2010. Accessed October 11, 2016. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7594061/Nazi-fairy-tales-paint-Hitler-as-Little-Red-Riding-Hoods-saviour.html

Hart, Imogen. Arts and Crafts Objects. Manchester, New York: Manchester

University Press; 2010. Hayton, Natalie. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in the 21st Century: Adaptation,

Archetypes, and the Appropriation of a Fairy Tale. Doctoral thesis, De Montfort University, 2013.

Heerspink, Dawn. “’No Man’s Land’: Fairy Tales, Gender, Socialization, Satire, and Trauma During the First and Second World Wars," Grand Valley Journal of History: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 1, 2012. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvjh/vol1/iss1/1

Heilmeyer, Marina. The Language of Flowers: Symbols and Myths. Munich: New

York: Prestel, 2001. Hemingway, Andrew. Marxism and the History of Art : From William Morris to

the New Left. Marxism and Culture. London ; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2006. Hutton, John. "Walter Crane and the Decorative Illustration of Books." Children's

Literature 38, no. 1 (2010): 27-43. https://muse.jhu.edu/ Hyndman, H. M. Further Reminiscences. London: Macmillan, 1912.

Crane, Walter. “Work of Walter Crane.” Art Journal (Easter 1898). Ishizuka, Kathy. "Lost Masterpiece Discovered in School Library." School

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Jones , Christine A. and Jennifer Schacker. Marvelous Transformations : An

Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2013.

Jumeau-Lafond, Jean-David. "Art Nouveau Revival 1900. 1933. 1966. 1974."

The Art Tribune. November 22, 2009. Accessed April 3, 2016. http://www.thearttribune.com/Art-Nouveau-Revival-1900-1933-1966.html.

Knuth, Rebecca, Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People

and a Nation. Scarecrow Press, 2012. Konody, Paul G. The Art of Walter Crane. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1902.

139

Korda, Andrea. “Learning from ‘good pictures’: Walter Crane’s Picture Books and Visual Literacy.” Word & Image. Forthcoming.

Lamb, Annette. "Contemporary Libraries: 1970s." History of Libraries. 2012.

Accessed April 10, 2016. http://eduscapes.com/history/contemporary/1970.htm. Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner, Johanna. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers,

Plants, and Trees. New York: Tudor Publishing. 1960. Livesey, Ruth. “Morris, Carpenter, Wilde, and the Political Aesthetics of Labor.”

Victorian Literature and Culture, 32:3 (2004): 601-16. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, and Anthony, A. V. S. The Skeleton in Armour. J.

R. Osgood, 1877. Lundin, Anne H. Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of

Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway. Lanham, Md.: Children's Literature Association and Scarecrow Press, 2001.

Mancoff, Debra N. Flora Symbolica : Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art. Munich :

London: Prestel, 2003. Massé, Gertrude. A Bibliography of First Editions of Books Illustrated by Walter

Crane, etc. London: Chelsea, 1923. Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy [by]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Lewis S. Feuer ed. Anchor Books, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1959.

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Documents

Intermediality and “Art for All” in the Work of Walter Crane